Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

56 SAGARI R. RAMDAS AND NITYA S. GHOTGE
of the pastoralists. Incredibly, despite the efforts of the state to settle and
alienate these communities from their means of production, seeds of local
crops grown through shifting cultivation and local breeds such as the
Deccanni sheep have been sustained and still persist, nurtured and cared
for by the women of these communities over decades. Given the kind of
violence and restrictions on livelihoods that we have witnessed over the
years, this hold on genetic resources must also be viewed as a form of
resistance to state diktat, where, despite all odds, women are holding on
boldly to perhaps the only means of production they can fearlessly say is
theirs. So women podu cultivators conserved seeds from year to year,
persisted with podu and have not meekly submitted to the Forest Department’s
efforts to replace podu with plantations; nor have they become
wage labourers and worked for the VSS/FD. Similarly, their pastoral sisters
have adamantly refused to shift to what the state views as eco-friendly
livestock, namely, ‘crossbred stall-fed cows’, but have stuck to rearing
their own sheep and goat breeds under grazing systems, despite strong
opposition from the state. In both these production contexts, women
have been instrumental in protecting and innovating with knowledge,
practice and genetic resources, which they have handed down to future
generations.
CONCLUSION
Resistance and violation of these laws and community resource management
regimes are treated as a ‘law and order’ problem, with the guilty
being punished accordingly. What stands out is how the state violence
mirrors colonial methods and is primarily oriented towards depriving
people of their means of production and thus their livelihood, confiscating
the adivasi women’s podu digging sticks and the pastoralist’s axe.
Other forms of violence include burning standing crops and denying their
animals access to drinking water, which has become a private resource.
The appropriation by the state (and now by private corporate capital) of
the little land, forest, water and genetic resources to which these communities
have access continues at an ever-increasing rate, particularly in the
current ideology of economic growth in the context of privatisation and
globalisation. A serious concern is that as long as these communities are
not granted clear legal rights to these resources, rights that recognise the