By Dhananjay Mandi, Eastern India Team
Community Forest Protection in Chequa Sabar Para
CRP Rampada Sabar has been working with the villagers of Chequa Sabar Para to promote protection and conservation of their forest resources. Chequa Sabar Para, home to 32 Kheria Sabar families is located in Buribandh Panchayat, Manbazar II Block, Purulia District, West Bengal. There is a forest of around 144 ha adjoining the village on which the villagers depend for their daily needs and is also a source of a variety of wild food. However, in the past the villagers did not actively safeguard this forest area and as a result villagers from adjoining villages would come and extract good timber from this forest and sell it in local markets. This led to the degradation of their forest and as a result they started finding it hard to find wood to meet their own needs. While other villagers exploited their forest the Sabar people of Chequa were not to collect wood from the forests near these other villages. Rampada facilitated a number of meetings with women’s groups and villagers of Chequa regarding the challenges they are facing with their forest, the need to protect it and the Forest Rights Act and the Community Forest Rights in particular. Some of these meetings were also attended by members of the Forest Department. Based on these meetings and deliberations the villagers of Sabar Chequa Sabar Para have come now come together to protect and safeguard and protect their forest. Two women’s groups of Chequa have taken the lead in this and a village youth Ramchand Sabar is working with them to keep tabs on the forest and facilitate regular village meetings and action for protecting the forest and acting extraction and stealing of timber from the forest. The community is in the process of developing systems and processes for community led conservation of their forests and they are also reaching out to the Forest Department for support for their efforts.
Abani Sabar’s Kitchen Garden in Jabla Sabar Para
Abani Sabar is a teacher in the Community Learning Centre (CLC) for Kheria Sabar children in his village Jabla Sabar Para, Punchia Block, Purulia District, West Bengal. Abani shared that in the past, he had no interest in Kitchen Gardens or vegetable cultivation and did not carry out such cultivation. However, after he got married to Parbati Sabar, a CRP associated with the Using Diversity project, he learned about agricultural practices and Kitchen Gardens in particular. Abani would accompany Parbati when she went for field visits, meeting and trainings focusing on the promotion of natural and organic farming, Kitchen Gardens and small-scale vegetable farming. This exposure and the discussions he participated in the course of his visits with Parbati give rise to a curiosity and enthusiasm for vegetable cultivation and Kitchen Gardens in Abani Sabar. This new enthusiasm led him to rethink how he should use a vacant plot of land in front of his house. and he decided that he would try out what he had learned in this plot. So, he fenced the plot of land and established a Kitchen Garden of his own where he is cultivating a variety vegetables like Jhinga / Ridge Gourd, Bengun/ Brinjal, Lanka / Chili, Kochu / Taro and Tomato. He is already getting good produce from his kitchen garden, and fellow villagers, inspired by Abani Sabar, are now also slowly taking up the practice.
