Wednesday 18th October 2006: Maal

I am back in rural parts now, but I have brought a souvenir from the city with me. Three in fact, in the form of Ellen, Satish and Karan. The latter two are IRMAns, working on a project in a nearby village but, owing to certain complications with eating arrangements, currently camping out in the Kojawara hospital. Ellen has come with me as she has joined an interesting-sounding project with Dilip ("The campest man I've ever met!" as she describes him) and needs to get some field experience. My first impressions of her had been of a sensible, but slightly ordinary person and it hasn’t taken me long to realise that they were wide off the mark: she is fascinating, hilarious and ferociously intelligent. She has spent time volunteering in Ghana and Kenya and is full of my kind of interest in foreign cultures and development. Luckily, she has also turned out to be just the impetus I needed in what could have otherwise been a rudderless second week.
   Unable to bask any more in the comforting luxury of a first week with absolutely no expectations, I felt strangely ill-equipped to leap into an achievement-studded second week. Part of the problem is the lack of one vital ingredient: supervision. Throughout last week I consoled myself with the knowledge that back in Udaipur I would be able to run through everything with Dilip, and work with him in shaping up a plan for this week. He had even half-promised that he would come to Maal with me. Imagine my shock when I discovered that he left last week for a lengthy family visit to Indore, 400 miles away! Dilipless, I was at least hoping to reconvene with Tapan, the curiously hard-to-like engineer who accompanied me on my first day. Frustratingly, he has not reappeared, and the antiquated excuse for a telephone in the hospital has not quite been equal to the task of connecting me with him in the Kherwara Office.
  The single topic on which I was most desperate for clarification from Dilip was that of land ownership. So much of a Joint Forest Management microplan seems to revolve around land - land quantity, land quality, land use, land misuse - that a basic understanding of how land ownership works is a pre-requisite for any burgeoning microplanner. My sorry attempts at background reading have left me far from enlightenment, and on my Monday morning mountain commute I was feeling particularly nonplussed. Left to my own devices I would have probably floundered, but the dynamic presence of Ellen inspired a research-it-yourself attitude in me. An hour's elaborate charade with Amratlal enabled us to glean some interesting insight, but it was only with the unexpected arrival of Satish and Karan (who clearly sensed that Maal was where it was all at) yesterday that we were really able to make inroads into the matter. Even then, the main issue that the presence of these interpreters served to highlight was that everyone is telling a different story.

Mango, teak, charnot and private land

  In essence, public land appears to be owned by either the Revenue Department or the Forest Department, but nobody seems to agree about how private land ownership relates to this, or whether the charnot (pasture land) is owned by the panchayats (village councils) or Revenue Department, or both. Amratlal told me at length about the theka, a tax paid by small landholders, like him and everybody else in Maal, in return for ownership of “revenue land”. Dolat Ram, a farmer who lives near the school and has been very friendly and helpful so far, seemed to agree with this. However, the family of Laxmanlal, a very bluff and hearty shop keeper, laughed out loud at the idea of a theka, saying it was “purane zamane mein” (in the olden days), while Bhagwanlal, a teacher who has become a friend and ally, claimed never to have heard of it!
   Of particular interest is the issue of encroachments, which in this context refers to any illicit activity on the 50 hectares of forest land that Vikas Samiti has already set aside for Joint Forest Management. Amratlal, who evidently likes to have a finger in every pie and is a leading light on the Forest Protection Committee (FPC), claims there has never been a problem with encroachments. Others claim low levels of encroachment, such as illicit logging, on the part of outsiders. Suraj, of History, Politics and Hindi Literature fame, goes even further, and suggests in a performance of stage whispers and glinting eyes that Amratlal’s brother and others have built houses on the JFM land, the very worst kind of encroachment! He even says the FPC are doing a valueless job in protecting the forest, and after an initial few months of reduced encroachments, forest conditions post-FPC formation are no better than they were before. Ellen suspects that Suraj is bitter that he, a Bachelor of Arts, has so little say in village politics and is therefore ultra-critical of anything the FPC does, maybe even to the extent of telling lies. I am inclined to agree, reluctantly, as I have a soft spot for Suraj, although Laxmanlal’s wife also hinted that Amratlal’s family were involved in encroachments. Amratlal, naturally, has said nothing about this and I have not brought up the subject as it would hardly constitute good etiquette to cast aspersions at his family’s integrity. He is kind and amiable and, as with Suraj, I am reluctant to entertain suspicions of his duplicity.

Next Post - Saturday 21st October 2006: Udaipur (will be posted Friday 21st October 2011)