At the time of the announcement of the lockdown at the start of the COVID pandemic, the total estimated number of migrant workers from Rayagada was 6,605. The sudden return of a quarter of them sent the villages into a tizzy. Fear ran high as the possibility of the Coronavirus reaching these remote corners via the returnees caused panic. But as the days passed and the ‘unprecedented’ became the ‘new normal’, people devised new ways to meet old needs. In the village of Kadasi, in Gunupur Tehsil of Rayagada District, for instance, it led to the community building a much needed check dam. This article is written by Parni Ray
On 25th March, 2020, when India’s prime minister announced the nationwide COVID lockdown, cities across India came to a grinding halt. The lives of over 120 million rural migrant workers in urban centres also came to a standstill. Overnight, they became stranded without jobs, food and money, miles away from home. With all modes of transportation suspended, almost a crore (10 million) of them walked thousands of kilometres to get back to their villages between the months of March and June, 2020. Among the returnees were over a thousand from Rayagada District in South Odisha.
Rayagada’s population of 961,959 consists primarily of the Lanjia Soura and Kondh communities, both classified by the Government of India as scheduled tribes. A majority of the people here are of working age, between the ages of 16 and 55. Households in Rayagada rely considerably on migration as a livelihood strategy. Almost 45 per cent of them reported having at least one member who had migrated for work over the past decade. At the time of the lockdown announcement, the total estimated number of migrant workers from Rayagada was 6,605. The sudden return of a quarter of them sent the villages into a tizzy. Fear ran high as the possibility of Coronavirus reaching these remote corners via the returnees caused panic. This wasn’t the only concern. Crop season was over, but the lockdown made it nearly impossible to reach markets to sell produce. Most were forced to sell locally at a massive loss. Meanwhile, families relying on daily wage labourers had no income, and there was a real fear of running out of basic resources.
However, as the days passed and the ‘unprecedented’ became the ‘new normal’, people devised new ways to meet old needs. Having everyone in the village, a rarity in an area where going out to make money is common, became an asset. The returned migrants, initially a source of panic, became a resource. The moment of crisis and tragedy offered unexpected opportunities of development. In the village of Kadasi, in Gunupur Tehsil of Rayagada District, for instance, it led to the community building a much needed check dam.
Tackling poverty and parched lands
Dozens leave Kadasi in pursuit of seasonal jobs every year. Typically, they’ll head out during the non-farming months, finding short-term jobs as construction workers in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Arunachal Pradesh through agents. By farming season, they are back to tend their land. Years in practice, this back and forth is a time-tested method of making money during an idle time. The meagre earnings away from home, roughly Rs 300 to Rs 400 a day, goes into building pukka (of good quality) houses, paying for their children’s education, weddings and other such ‘big’ expenses.
One would classify such migration as aspirational, rather than distress-induced. But distress – economic, environmental, societal – is no stranger to the people of Rayagada. Like the rest of Odisha, one of the poorest states of India, poverty here is high: 32 per cent of total households in the district live below the poverty line, 60 per cent of the children are undernourished, and 88 per cent severely stunted. Most families rely on cultivation, cultivation relies on rain. This acute dependency on the monsoon predisposes the area to drought, not an uncommon occurrence. Water scarcity, already a hazard, has only been exacerbated by climate change. Even when these challenges don’t directly influence migration, they provide the context in which people from the area look outwards for opportunities.
“Everything depends on water.” Gambhira Sabar, 60, the sarpanch (chief) of Kadasi Village, told me during my visit. We were sitting under the cool canopy of mango trees surrounded by the men of the village. Gambhira grows paddy and cashews on his scattered patches of land. Most others here do the same. Both crops rely heavily on water and because it hasn’t rained since September, fortunes aren’t kind just at present, he told me. Waving aside reassurances about the upcoming monsoon he chuckled and said: “Mote likhita diya” (Give it to me in writing). The men under the trees laughed with him.
Though heartfelt, the jokes were tinged with concern. Sourcing water for the fields has been a ceaseless source of worry in Kadasi. This is why village residents like Gambhira requested a new check dam as early as 2019, shortly after WOTR launched the Building Adaptive Capacities and Resilience to Climate Change of tribal and marginalised communities in Odisha Project, in collaboration with Bread for the World.The programme, being implemented in 11 villages spanning 6,542 hectares of Gunupur Taluka in Rayagada, aims to contribute to an improved climate adaptive and resilient livelihood for the rural communities.
Transforming Kadasi’s farming landscape
A check dam is a small barrier built across water channels to slow down the flow of water. This reduced speed prevents soil erosion and allows water to seep in, replenishing groundwater levels and benefiting the environment over time. In the short term, a check dam can also retain rainwater for productive use. The people of Kadasi were familiar with the benefits of a check dam. A nearly decade-old such structure built by the Odisha Government had been lying dysfunctional for a few years. The villagers built bori bunds to compensate for it, but these were less effective. The channels from the old dam to the fields were not permanent, causing water to seep into the surrounding area. Every day, villagers dug new passages in the wet soil to direct more and more water to their own patches of land. Far from resolving Kadasi’s water woes, this led to tension and conflict in the village.
The new dam, one of the two check dams built by WOTR in the area, resolved much of the strife. In total, the two dams have the potential to harvest about 450,000 litres of water and currently irrigate 25 acres of land, benefitting 22 people. The water it makes available is especially useful during the dry rabi months (November to April), allowing farmers to have two crop cycles instead of one. This is how Kadasi resident Sumanto Soboro now grows rice and millets during the kharif season (June to October) and sunflower and dal in the winter. Sumanto, 40, shares three acres of land with his four brothers. More than half of this land was fallow until 2020, when they developed it with WOTR’s help.
“Our land was uphill and uneven, making it hard to grow anything because water would run off,” he explained. “WOTR helped us level it. They also introduced us to organic fertilising techniques and provided sprayers, weeders, sprinklers, and seeds for the Rabi crops I now grow,” he added shyly. Land levelling is a time consuming process. So far, WOTR has made 23 acres of land cultivable and helped 44 farmers increase their income. Making his land fit for farming hadn’t been easy, Sumanto told me. But the results were worth it. Last year, Sumanto’s yield included over 20 quintals of rice and enough sunflower seeds to extract 130 litres of oil. The levelled land and the tools had been crucial for this. But such a good harvest would not be possible without the water provided by the check dam the villagers built.
Building from the ground up
Building anything in Kadasi and its neighbouring villages is nothing short of an event. Not far from the mango trees we were sitting under, men in half-folded lungis and women in large men’s button-downs were working on a newly laid foundation. With their faces glistening hotly under the June sun they were passing around brick, stone and wet cement. It was going to be a house, the sarpanch told me. Everyone turns up to help when a new house is built here. The building materials are sourced locally: sand from nearby riverbanks, stones from the hills, wood from the forests, bricks kilned by the villagers. “If rods and concrete grew on trees, we wouldn’t need to go to the market for anything,” the sarpanch said, clearly repeating a popular saying. There is no money to be made, but everyone who helps build is fed three meals a day until the house is done. It’s an easy exchange, the men told me, making this practice as good as tradition.
During a visit to the neighbouring Kulusing Village a few days later, I was invited to Premati and Jenerious Mandal’s home for lunch. The Mandal family home was being expanded. The work had started weeks before and would take at least two more weeks to complete, they told me. Premati had been cooking for the twenty odd people building for them every day, using ingredients from her own larder. On a false ceiling above the table we were eating at, were sacks of rice from the Mandal’s fields. The eggs came from their chickens, and the chillies, tomatoes, onions, and coriander from Premati’s garden. The seeds for the garden had come from WOTR, Premati was one of the 900 women who had benefited from the organisation’s kitchen garden scheme.
The check dam at Kadasi had taken forty-five days to build. Everyone, men and women, was paid Rs 300 a day. Besides their wages, WOTR provided materials and building instructions. Work began in the summer of 2020, during the peak of the COVID wave. The returnees to the village had been quarantined for weeks by then. Their experience with building proved an asset; it provided the strength and skill required to complete a long-overdue task. The communal spirit at the check dam site was quite in contrast to most of the world at the time. While the villagers worked shoulder to shoulder, people everywhere else were forced to distance themselves from each other. If the dam provided the people of Kadasi hope and purpose, the world at large was struggling with, at best uncertainty, at worst obliteration. Aside from the practical benefits it brought to the village of Kadasi, the check dam strengthened the local people’s connection with their surroundings, their natural resources and each other. Unwittingly, it became a symbol of the solidarity and resilience the people here displayed in the face of a difficult time.
Coming home to alternative livelihoods
Unlike many other migrant workers in Rayagada, Jio Sabar, 32, returned home to Kadasi in 2019, long before the pandemic. He was working as a maistry (mason) in Thane, a suburb of Mumbai, at the time. It was the last of many stops, he told me in fluent Hindi. Home offered respite, but Jio didn’t have enough land to sustain himself and his family of six. This was what had driven him to the city in the first place. Still, he was keen to stay and figure out his options. Things clicked into place when the WOTR-instituted Village Development Committee (VDC) nominated him for the organisation’s alternative livelihood scheme. On the VDC’s suggestion, he was given five goats to rear by the end of the year.
Just kilometres away, in Soising Village, Manej Raito, 38,was living a similar story. Once a construction labourer, Manej had been given goats in 2018. Besides the animals, WOTR provided him materials for the cattle shed next to his house and still offers yearly veterinary help. A total of 30 people were provided goats under the alternative livelihood scheme. Other beneficiaries have received carpentry tools, rice and spice pulverizers, and even a photocopy machine. Like Jio, almost all availing of the scheme have unavoidable shortcomings—limited land, restricted mobility—preventing them from making the most of agricultural practices. The scheme attempts to provide them support to make a living despite their difficulties.
Jio had been out herding his goats when I arrived at Kadasi. He now has 32 goats, six of them male. Male goats fetch more money at the market, he told me. All his animals were for trade, not for milk or meat for personal consumption. “I sold five goat kids in 2020 for Rs 60,000,” he said proudly, “10 in 2022 for Rs 120,000.”The big ones he was rearing now still needed a few more months to mature. “They need to be big and strong and well-fed to get a good price,” he said, “for that herding them every day is a must’. No, it wasn’t too hot for herding, he assured me. The forests, where he took the goats to graze, were both cool and quiet; he spent hours there. We sat quietly for a bit, watching people working on the new house, kids playing under the sun, the mid-day sun filtering through the leaves above.
(Courtesy: WOTR/ wotr.org. The writer is an independent journalist, blending her expertise in social sciences and environmental issues to craft compelling stories that inspire change.)
from Webdoux