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manure from our own livestock - from that we get good crops. Where will we get so much money? Who will know us there? Which moneylender will give us money? If we don't get a good crop and don't have any money, then we will have to mortgage our land. Here we bring water to our fields by making channels from streams .... If we had electricity, then we could also pump up water from the Narmada and get a winter crop. But even though forty-fifty years have passed since independence, there is no electricity in the villages along the river, nor is there river irrigation. .... We have flowing water and good fodder in the forest. We don't live as much by farming as we do by our livestock. We keep hens, goats, cows and buffaloes. Some have 2-4 buffaloes, some have 8-10. Almost everyone has ten -twenty-forty goats.... From Gujarat people come to our hills to graze their cattle. Our fodder and water is so plentiful. The forest is our moneylender and banker. In hard times we go to the forest. We build our houses from its wood - from teak and bamboo. From ningodi and hiyali (types of bamboo) splints we weave screens. From the forests we make baskets and cots, ploughs and hoes.... We also eat leaves from the forest, hegva, mahia, amli, goindi, bhanjan - all these leaves we eat. If there is a famine we survive by eating roots and tubers. When we fall sick, our medicine men bring us back to health by giving us leaves, roots, bark from the forest.... We know the name of each and every tree, shrub and herb; we know its uses. If we were made to live in a land without forests, then all this learning that we have cherished over the generations will be useless and slowly we will forget it all. .... We worship our gods by singing the gayana - the song of the river. We sing the gayana during the naval and divasa festivals, describing how the world was made, how humans were born, from where the great river came.... We eat fish often. Fish is our stand by when we have unexpected guests. The river brings us silt from upstream which is deposited on the banks... Our children play on the river's banks, swim and bathe there. Our cattle drink there all through the year for the big river never dries up. In the belly of the river, we live contented lives. We have lived here for generation after generation; do we have a right to the mighty river Narmada and to our forests or don't we? Do you government people recognise that right or not? You city people live in separate houses. You ignore each others' joys and sadness. We live with our clan, our relatives, our kin. All of us pool together our labour and construct a house in a single day, weed our fields, and perform any small or big task as it comes along. In Gujarat who will come to lend us a hand and make our work SCERT lighter? Will the big farmers come to weed our fields or to construct our houses? |