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Having broken the
back of the exploiters locally, through struggles,armed and otherwise, the
masses sought to better their lives through cooperative activities. In these
areas, where the productive forces are extremely backward, where agriculture
itself is in a preliminary state of development, where the necessities of life
are themselves difficult to come-by..... the party led the people, not only in
struggle against the enemy, but also to develop a cooperative movement through
the setting up of Mutual Work Teams.
It was in 1995 that
the first organs of power, the GRCs (Gram Rajya Committees), began to develop.
Party units were also developing in the villages. In 1996, the mass
organisations, the DAKMS and KAMS, took up a wide propaganda campaign throughout
the South Bastar division, calling on the people to organise themselves into
work teams for agricultural production and other necessary activities. In 1997
the first work teams were established in the vast areas of South Bastar.
The work teams set up
were for agricultural production — i.e. clearing and preparing the land,
building mud-banks for water, ploughing and harvesting; collection of wood for
cooking purposes; and collection of grass/leaves for thatching the huts. Also
set up were the ‘seed cooperatives’ and cooperatives for selling forest produce.
In DK, in many tribal areas exploitative cooperative methods already existed.
The party, having studied many of these systems, removed the exploitative
aspect, and built on their positive factors. As a result, the people were able
to accept it more easily.
The activities that
were cooperatively undertaken by the Work Teams were : clearing the field of the
weeds and plant-remnants; cutting and burning waste/twigs to prepare the field;
building mud-banks to the fields to hold the water for rice cultivation;
building small monsoon tanks to retain rain water; cutting grass from the
forests to thatch roofs of huts; and collecting fire-wood for cooking. Families
were divided into small work teams, the basis of which could be either relatives
coming together or families of adjoining houses. In the ploughing and
bank-building work teams, mostly men were involved; in the fire-wood collection
teams there were mostly women, mobilised by the KAMS. Each work team elected its
leader.
In the 1997/98
agricultural season 382 work teams were initiated in 141 villages. As it was
their first such experience, people did not have full faith in this .... so the
response varied. In some villages they did not till the fields jointly, in
others they were enthusiastic about it. In some, they started jointly, but
abandoned the cooperative effort half-way. In other places, they started the
work individually, but later ploughed the fields jointly. In most villages, a
few families did not join the work-team. In the majority of work teams
initiated, some cooperative work was done. To take some examples :
In village KG there
are 52 Koya families. Three work teams were formed of 14, 15 and 6 families
respectively. 17 families did not join. The 14-member team began ploughing
jointly, but due to rainfall having stopped on the second day this was given up.
Anyhow, they worked jointly on clearing the fields, building the mud-banks and
also harvesting the crop. The 15-member team did the same work in four rounds of
joint activity. Each family contributed one member to the work team. The 17
families who did not join had only one working member.
PK village has 66
families. Six work teams were initiated. In the smaller families who did not
have an extra working member the families did not participate in the joint
ploughing but took part in other joint activities. Though they had just one or
two ploughs, they used their plough for their own work on one day, and would use
it for the cooperative effort on another day. Those with many ploughs gave one
for the cooperative work. All these work teams did two rounds of activities in —
clearing the field, building mid-banks and thatching the houses.
T village had 53
families. There were two teams of 10 each and three of 11 each. Each work team
did seven rounds in building mud-banks, harvesting and thatching houses.
Some examples on how
work-teams got organised :
(i) Where the
families had 3 to 4 wooden ploughs, the size of the work team varied from 7 to
12 families. Each family contributed one member and one plough to the
cooperative work, while the balance 2 to 3 ploughs were kept for their own
fields.
(ii) Where the
families had only one or two ploughs the work team would be small, not exceeding
four families. Many of these joined only in the other cooperative activities but
not in ploughing.
(iii) In some work
teams the families pooled all their ploughs.... but such examples were few.
(iv) In some
villages, work teams were built street-wise, in others, relatives came together.
(v) In some, they
ploughed their fields individually, while they jointly ploughed black-gram and
jointly did the weeding and harvesting.
(vi) In some,
irrigation from tanks was done, individually, but harvesting was done jointly.
(vii) In some, every
field was ploughed in rotation, ploughing each field two to three times. In
other villages, one person’s field was fully ploughed and then the next was
taken up ....but in this latter method, the last field to be ploughed suffered
losses.
The government has
sought to disrupt these work teams by trying to organise the village elders
against this effort and by sowing dissensions amongst the people. Also some
landlords/moneylenders/lumpens who have surrendered before the party, entered
the work teams and tried to sabotage it from within.
After the first
year’s experience an entire assessment was made, methods were reviewed, lessons
drawn and future plans revised. Overall, in South Bastar division, clearing the
fields and building mud-banks was cooperatively done in 220 villages; in 211
villages the work teams jointly harvested the paddy; in 138 villages the women
jointly collected firewood, and in 56 villages grass for thatching purpose was
jointly collected.
Besides this, Paddy
cooperative Societies and cooperatives for marketing forest produce have been
setup. The Paddy cooperative Societies (Vanji Banks) have existed from before,
and provide seeds in times of drought.
The simple tribals
are fleeced while trying to sell forest produce in the market. So cooperative
societies have been set up, that purchase the forest produce at the market rate
and give in return commodities also at market rates. The plan is to make these
societies multi-purpose providing the villages with their major agricultural
needs — like seeds, iron tips for the plough, axes, knives, sickles, shovels,
saws, etc.
As these cooperatives
develop, a new consciousness grows — that of commune-type living. Also, in the
process leadership qualities develop, planning and accounting systems grow,
administrative qualities develop and a consciousness of the new government
taking birth — of the people — grows. They learn to become their own masters,
taking their destiny into their own hands. The backward tribals of Dandakaranya
are for the first time in their history, developing a self-respect and
self-confidence under the leadership of the party, by building the embryonic
form of the new democratic society of the future.
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