Birds and Bellies

I have always been confused about what the hell it is that created a mammoth media industry in India. It’s not like they produce any great news and opinion, except a palmful of websites, magazines and newspapers. Instead they are a conglomeration of monoliths that are anti people, anti dissent and anti responsibiliti. So within a simplistic framework, this is the theory: there’s hardly any land left for people to cultivate, mills have shut down, most industrial processes have been mechanized and we are left with a bunch of annoying human beings with nothing better to do but ask questions on governance. Why not make a whole bogus industry for some of them to work out of so that the trouble is channelized and they feel like under the rainbow of ‘dissent’ and ‘democracy’? Media Boom! So, I suppose, goes the story for the over production of other urban career enhancing creations, along with fake products that you buy and sell in the market in the name of investment to make these industries grow.
But, land. That much talked about issue that if not talked about in the Naga context would leave a gaping hole in my own career as a Professional Unemployed. Hence, if you’re a resident of Nagaland and don’t know a thing about the disappearing birds and emerging bellies on the Nagascape then you’re clearly not seeing. Isn’t it strange to see paddy fields without scarecrows? Or pot bellies on traditionally lean and muscular Naga folk?
A land (and by connotation its people) that was necessarily symbiotic with its environment has increasingly changed over the years to accommodate bizarre foreign induced variables. It is necessary, in this context and others, to talk about sovereignty which could possibly be achieved by making smaller communities control their land, food production and environment, leading them able to determine their future as a people or nation which collectivize and form rules around their mode of survival instead of modes that define other civilizations. Freedom and definition of self-rule could be derived from this meaning of sovereignty.
In the 1950s, as the “friends of the hill people” and its siblings were busy burning jungles and destroying Naga fields in an attempt to weed the wayward out, their mechanically trained violent minds didn’t picture or really care about consequences 50 years later. Ever since, infiltration of all sorts, not insurgency, has changed and affected the Nagascape in myriad ways. Forests were destroyed due to which jhum cycles suffered, not to mention the environmental damage caused. Villagers fled into forests, feeding on wild berries, roots, birds and animals as their granaries were reduced to ashes. New forms of religion, technology and climate variables, outside the control of its people, swept through vast corners of the hills. Old villages and traditional architecture were burnt down, eventually to be supplemented with modern forms and structures of education—the kind that train for brain jobs, more revered now than cultivator aesthetics, or local livelihood support forms of fishing, weaving or other crafts. The infiltration of machines, fumes and chemicals is another story.
A similar transformation is seen in culture as animism earned notoriety (it’s not just about head hunting you know), slowly shutting out spirituality and deep respect of the soil, forests, wildlife and overall environment to be replaced by a supreme god, necessitating sinful short sightedness. It resulted in people holding their environment in secondary value, shooting birds and other wildlife down at will, cutting trees down whenever required. Festivals around harvest seasons have more or less disappeared reducing cultural incentives around agriculture along with economic ones.
For higher growth rates the government, through Village Development Boards, is pushing for cash crops like ginger, cardamom and teak for which subsidies in lakhs of crores are provided to farmers. Seeds for these less-sturdy varieties are cheaply available but their distribution and selling costs all the way to Dimapur don’t get any cheaper. Farmers of subsistence crops, who use natural water resource systems of irrigation instead of canal irrigation, provide local nutritious food, bind carbon into the soil and plants etc., are given no subsidies for practicing systems that will actually help sustain them for more generations independently, reduce and tackle climate change effectively.  
Cultivators have to work very hard to grow paddy enough for just the family because other subsistence crops like millets have near about disappeared in the lack of incentives to grow them. With that, farmers switch to cash crops which rot quickly leading to poverty, reduction in local farming and increased dependence on food and other commodities from outside. The whole system leads to placing higher importance on earning wages and pot bellies resulting from sedentary (and mostly sedatory) jobs, if at all available. An economy dependent steeply on the ‘free market’, as we’ve seen throughout the world, results in weakened sovereignty whether there are borders drawn to our liking or not.
Slash and burn/shifting/jhum agriculture, indigenous to the region, is neglected by factors like the Village Council, which traditionally decided when to slash and burn certain sections of the forest on lower foothills (forests of the upper hills are preserved for their quality to hold natural water resources) that are ready for new plantation, but don’t take on that role actively anymore as there are other persistent development or political issues. With the breakdown of these roles, forests are cut down prematurely or too late or for more wood without accountability through the advent of new technologies like the wood saw.
Jhum is not just about food production. It is a community based exercise, which has systems for knitting people closer within the community. For instance, if you are allotted a piece of land, you are to share 1/3rd of its produce with neighbours. I have heard of old people who cannot farm anymore, but still get enough vegetables every year as so was the system they followed in their younger days. Instead of an individual profit based mind that modern education makes us develop, is this indigenous community practice not a cultural heritage that strengthens a polity from within? Is this not what leads to true sovereignty?
Organisations like the North East Network in Chizami are working with subsistence farmers sharpening skills the latter already have, combining them with new technologies and highlighting their strength. It makes agriculturists see the long term value of ensuring control over their own food, and also prepares them for advocacy around government policies. They know they can’t reverse climate change or bring back the lost birds but with sustainable farming and environment preservation practices, in Nagaland, they can strengthen local communities politically and physically, making them less dependent on the outside world, producing empowered future generations that can tackle the onslaught that climate change and other infiltration is bound to bring.