Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

54 SAGARI R. RAMDAS AND NITYA S. GHOTGE
carry their axe to lop fodder, sometimes deliberately using wrong lopping
methods intended to damage a tree as a sign of their non-cooperation with
the state. Needless to say, it is women who are directly attacked by the forest
guards, and/or the VSS committees or landlords. It is once again the women
who stand up and resist this, as we see in the words of Woteri Naguramma,
a woman shepherd of Bangarammanaidu Kandriga village, Chittoor
district, Andhra Pradesh, narrating an incident which occurred in the
summer of 2005:
Like everyday, I went to the forest to graze my goats. I have 30 goats. I was
using my lopping stick to lop branches of fodder for my animals. Suddenly,
the forest guard appeared in front of me, and threatened me. He said
I was forbidden to graze my animals in the forest, and was not allowed to
rear goats, as there was now a VSS in the village and through that the
forest was out of bounds. He forcibly snatched away my lopping stick.
I told him that I have been grazing my goats in this forest since many years,
as had my mother and her mother too. He did not listen. I ran all the way
back to my village and told the others. The next day the entire ‘sangham’
(group) of women and men came with me to the forest. We found the
forest guard and we caught him and tied him to the tree and we left him
there for a couple of hours to teach him a lesson. We told him we would
not untie him till he handed back the lopping stick, and till he promised
never to threaten us again. Since that day, we have grazed our animals
without any interference but we are not sure how long this will last; is it
till the next guard comes?
Saving Indigenous Seeds and Breeds:
A Form of Resistance
A favourite strategy of the state to ‘settle’ these communities has been to
force new technologies onto them in the name of ‘improved productivity,
efficiency and modernisation’. Thus, livestock development policies and
programmes have consistently argued for replacing the ‘large number of
useless non-descript low producing indigenous stock’ with ‘improved high
producing breeds of superior genetic potential imported from the West’.
So we have Jersey cows in place of indigenously-bred Khillar cattle, and
Marino Rams introduced into flocks of Deccani breed. They also argue
that these improved varieties need not be grazed, but can be ‘stall-fed’.