Rohan Mukerjee
The Sabar people are classified as one of Jharkhand’s 8 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) and they primarily dwell in the forested hills of East Singhbhum District in south-east Jharkhand. The Sabar have traditionally depended on forests for their survival and livelihoods and are yet to adopt sedentary agriculture in a big way. They have been a mostly nomadic forest dependent people living largely in makeshift huts made from sticks and thatch grass. In the last few generations Sabar families have been settling in small hamlets or tolas located at the fringes of larger villages which are mostly inhabited by Bhumij and Santhal people. The arrangements with the villages on fringes they reside have mostly been informal and as a consequence most Sabar families from insecure land tenure. This combined with the fact that many Sabar families are yet to get necessary government documents like Aadhar cards, ration cards and caste certificates means that they have largely been excluded from a variety of schemes and benefits provided by the Government to ST and PVTG and families. Many families have been excluded from both national and state level housing schemes like Indira Awas, Pradhan Mantri Awas and Birsa Awas Yojna due to insecure tenure and lack of requisite documents. Where in the past houses were made for them or efforts were made to settle them in a chosen location like Sabar Nagar the quality of the houses provided was very poor and as a result of the sudden forced transition to permanent concrete houses most Sabar families were unable to adjust to the new accommodation and returned to traditional make shift dwellings in forest areas.
The Sabar continue to depend on forests for a variety of wild food which includes both plant and animal-based food. The little cash income they generate also comes largely from the sale of firewood, baskets and other products made from grasses, bamboo and palm leaves, wild food and other NTFPs. With the spread of agriculture and increased industrialization of the district East Singhbhum has been experiencing high rates of deforestation and degradation of its forest resources. This has had a far reaching negative impact on Sabar families especially in areas where their natural resource base has been severely eroded. Most Sabar families find it hard to adapt to agriculture based or industry driven economic systems and tend to be left out of the ambit of the push for development in the region which often comes at the expense of the very resources the Sabar have depended on for thousands of years. With a erosion of their traditional sources of survival and livelihood most Sabar families have been facing a serious crisis with regards to health, food and nutritional security. Their challenges are compounded by the fact that they are yet to receive rights to the forests they have depended on for thousands of years as a result of poor implementation of FRA even 14 years after it came into effect in 2006. The life circumstances of the Sabar as a nomadic or semi-nomadic people make it challenging for them to even apply for various rights provided through FRA like Community Forest Rights and Habitat Rights for PVTG communities.
In the current phase of the Using Diversity (UD) project – 2020 to 2023, we are working with 13 Sabar hamlets in Potka and Musaboni blocks of East Singhbhum District, Jharkhand. Paryavaran Chetna Kendra (PCK) under the stewardship of Siddeshwar Sardar will be responsible for grass root implementation of project objectives and the focus will be on study, research, awareness building and strengthening of wild and uncultivated food practices; promotion of mixed cropping practices with a focus on homestead plots; and improved implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006) in Sabar areas with a focus on Individual Forest Rights (IFR), Community Forest Rights (CFR) and Habitat Rights. The project fellows are Mohan Sabar, a young Sabar from Hitbasa-Nutandi Sabar tola/hamlet, and Fakir Sardar from Mejeguda. Sonaram Bhumij from Dokarsai will be supporting coordination of activities.
On the 13th and 14th of November 2020 along with the PCK team I visited two Sabar tolas/hamlets to get a preliminary understanding of prevailing conditions and introduce the project concept, aims and objectives to the respective communities.
Hitbasa-Nutandi Sabar Tola – 13th November 2020
Hitbasa-Nutandi Sabar tola is a small Sabar hamlet of Hitbasa village home to 8 Sabar families. The main Hitbasa village comprises of 25 Bhumij households and 6 Santhal households. The land tenure of Sabar families in the tola, with regards to habitation plots was relatively secure despite not having received IFR titles. The tola currently had 2 houses constructed under Birsa Awas Yojna. One of these belonged to our community fellow Mohan Sabar’s family and the other which was just in the process of being completed belonged to one of the other families. Mohan Sabar’s family is one of the oldest families of the village and had settled here when Hitbasa was first established. They are the only Sabar family with paddy land and Mohan himself has received a lot of exposure to the outer world. As a child was taken to Sabar Nagar where he was enrolled a school especially for PVTGs – Unusuchit Janjati Ucch Vidyalaya, where he stayed in the hostel and studied till class 6. After that he worked in Bharat Sevasharm’s orchard. Bharat Sevasharm was impressed with his work and subsequently sent him to work in their centers in Ranchi and Dumka. After this worked for a year and a half or so in a factory in Jasugoda as a laborer responsible for loading and unloading. He finally decided to return to his own village, got married, and preferred to manage his family’s agricultural activities instead of migrating and being away from home. His family has largely adopted livelihood practices of the more dominant Bhumij and Santhal communities and depend largely on paddy cultivation. As a result of his exposure to the outside world Mohan is proficient in several languages namely Bhumij, Santhali (his wife is also proficient in Santhali), Hindi, Bangla and Oriya. However, as a result of growing up away from home he has little knowledge of the traditional practices of the Sabar like the variety of uncultivated and wild food that they depend on. His brother Sonu Sabar who had remained in the village had a good knowledge of a rich variety of wild food and Mohan has been picking his brother’s brains to update his knowledge after joining the UD project as a fellow.
A small meeting of Sabar villagers was organized in Mohan’s courtyard. Men, women and children from all Sabar households participated in the meeting. Unlike members of other Adivasi communities of the region like the Bhumij and Santhal they were extremely shy and wary of outsiders. If it wasn’t for Mohan most would not have come to meet us. They were very hesitant to take their places on mats and khatiyas laid out for the meeting and had to be goaded to come closer by Mohan and his family. However, a discussion of the wild food that they consume facilitated through the sharing of the set of Hindi books on wild food by Naresh Biswas helped them open up. Both men and women were excited to explore the different wild foods covered in the books and were quick to share local names.
Sambu Sabar who was reported to be adept at the collection of wild food from neighbouring forests presented a few wild foods that he had collected. He had collected a substantial quantity of ants and their larvae, called Kukti. He shared that they best time for collection is early morning as later in the day the ants are more active and bite the collector a lot. He had collected the Kutki which he brought for the meeting at dawn but despite the care he had taken his forearms were marked with several bites, but they did not appear to faze him.
The villagers shared that Kukti are very nutritious and tasty, they either eat them raw or make a paste or chutney. The peak season is the winter months of Kartik, Aghan and Pus and this is also a commercially valuable NTFP with villagers selling them for around Rs. 140 per kilo in their village with the rate in markets being considerably higher at around Rs. 500 -800 per kilo. Sambu also shared a few wild tubers and greens that he had collected.
A few tubers are also cultivated in homestead gardens. While most Sabar households depended primarily on wild food collection they all had small homestead gardens where they grew a variety of vegetables like tomato, brinjal, chili and gourds. Chohra Sabar one of the older villagers present shared that he cultivated Gangi (Sorghum) as well.
We shared that we aimed to work with them to understand the variety of wild food they depend on, the challenges associated with wild food collections and also promote conservation and protection of forests and regeneration of wild food trees and plants. We also discussed our desire to promote mixed cropping of a variety of crops, community seed exchange and strengthening of homestead gardens. Forest Rights issues and challenges were also discussed briefly and Mohan shared that he would work closely with his fellow villagers on the different core themes of the UD project. We spent sometime with the Pradhan of Hitbasa village and informed him about our project and he expressed his desire to extend all possible support from his side.
Jharnakocha Otejhari Sabar Tola – 14th November 2020
Jharnakocha Otejhariwas around 16 km from PCK’s office in Bada Sikdi, Potka. In order to reach the village we passed through Mejogoda forest which, Siddehswar shared, had been felled in 1980. At the time forest patches used to be leased out for logging and as a result this is secondary growth forest which is around 40 years old with no large old trees. PCK worked with villages in this area for a considerable period of time to promote community led forest management, protection and conservation. They worked from around 2005 to 2010 and helped establish a Jungle Bachao Samiti involving 12 villages of the area which has helped protect and conserve the forests of the area. Due to conflict with contractors and middlemen they were forced to stop direct interventions, but they are still on good terms with villagers and village leaders like Jayram Sardar, the Pradhan of Otejhari. In fact, Jayram Sardar played a key role in facilitating communication with the Sabar villagers and setting up meetings and interactions.
Otejhari comprises of 17 Bhumij households, 4 Santhal households and 18 Sabar households which inhabit the Sabar tola on the forested foothills of Jugsaloi. Even here the reticence of the Sabar people to interact with outsiders was evident. Sonua Sabar the grandson of the village Pujari/Priest who showed us around his village shared that an elderly Sabar couple had gone to the forest to avoid interacting with us. Sonua who spoke bangla gave us a tour of his village.
Houses ranged from the traditional makeshift Sabar hut made from sticks and thatch grass to houses which were a mix of mud, brick, stone and mud with tile or thatch grass roofs. Sonua showed us a house that had been built a decade or so back under Indira Awas Yojna which was a mix of stone, bricks and mud with a tiled roof and no door. This pointed to the corruption and poor implementation on the ground of Indira Awas Yojana which was implemented by the UPA government at the Center. Currently no families are receiving houses under state or national habitation schemes due to an unresolved land conflict.
All households had vibrant homestead cultivation with a variety of crops and trees being cultivated. The crops included Gangi (Sorghum), barbatti (cow pea), rahar (pigeon pea), 3 varieties of tubers, a variety of vegetables. The homestead plots also had several tree species like munga (drumstick), papaya, and banana.
With access to substantial diverse forests villagers reported that they consumed a large variety of wild leafy vegetables, fruits and flowers, tubers, insects, aquatic species, and wild animals. The village pujari Chamak Sabar show us a substantial quantity of recently collected tubers and wild greens were set out to dry by one of the households. The villagers also sell firewood and a variety of NTFPs to generate cash income. Firewood is sold at around Rs. 40 per bundle which is substantially lower than the market rate of Rs. 150-200. The make a variety of products with bamboo, grass and leaves both for their own use and for sale. These included bamboo brooms and fish traps.
Chamak was the only Sabar with paddy land but due to some family problems he had got a Santhal family to cultivate the land. A Jamshedpur based NGO Yuva had provided some support for kitchen gardens but most crops had been grown by the villagers themselves. Sonua also showed us two on their sacred places one of which was on a hill top and we visited Jayra Sarna the lower one.
We had an interaction with Sabar and Bhumij villagers where once again we shared the UD wild food books by Naresh Biswas and the villagers were able to identify a majority of wild food and shared that they consume most of them on a regular basis. One of the Sabar villagers gifted us a collection of wild tubers and roots several of which had medicinal uses. The meeting ended with a meal of Khichdi and Hadia with Chamar providing a puja seeking blessings for the village and also us who had come to visit them.
We visited Otejhari’s Pradhan Jayram Sardar’s house for tea while returning to Bada Sikdi. Jayram shared that the ancestors of current Bhumij residents of Otejhari had given the Sabar people land to settle and they accept the rights of the Sabar to that land and are in favor of government interventions for the benefit of the Sabar on that land like construction of concrete houses under Birsa Awas Yojna. However, the Santhal villagers claim that the land is theirs and as a result development activities have come to a halt and no Birsa Awas Yojna houses are being built.
This land conflict has also halted the construction of a school and currently classes are conducted under a temporary hut without walls and a thatch and tarpolin roof. Jayram shared that he was committed to getting pattas (IFR titles) for Sabar households and also rights to their land and looked for PCK’s support in this struggle.
