Rahul Banerjee | |
---|---|
Rahul Banerjee with Khajan: Comrades in Arms | |
Native name | राहुल बनर्जी |
Born | |
Residence | Indore, India |
Education | BTech in Civil Engg. PhD in Envir. Planning & Mgmt. |
Alma mater | IIT Kharagpur CEPT University |
Organization | Mahila Jagat Lihaaz Samiti |
Known for | Communitarian Natural Resource Conservation |
Awards | TOI Social Impact Award 2011 |
Website | anar-kali |
Rahul Banerjee is a social activist and development researcher. He works along with the Bhil Adivasis and Dalits to synthesise their traditional qualities with modern skills and contribute to socio-economically equitable and environmentally sustainable communitarian development as architects of their own future. [1] [2]
Through the organisations Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath, [3] a trade union, Dhas Gramin Vikas Kendra, [4] a public trust and Mahila Jagat Lihaaz Samiti, [5] a registered society, he has along with others participated in promoting and preserving the knowledge, livelihoods and culture of the Bhils and Dalits and countered their internal patriarchy over a period of three decades using mass mobilisation, policy advocacy, media advocacy, research, project implementation and legal action. [6] He has written and published profusely in journals and books about his work and research.
Rahul Banerjee was born in Kolkata and did his early schooling at La Martiniere Calcutta. [7] After completing Higher Secondary from the same school, he joined Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 1978 for pursuing Civil Engineering. He later obtained a PhD in Environmental Planning and Management in 2013 from CEPT University, Ahmedabad. [8] An important event in his life came in 1982, while still in college during a conversation with poor Adivasi bullock cart drivers carrying hay to the market convinced him that his IIT education was irrelevant for the wellbeing of Adivasis and turned him towards a life of activism. [7] He is married to Subhadra Khaperde who is a Dalit Feminist Activist. [9] [7]
Kolkata is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian census, it is the seventh most populous city; the city had a population of 4.5 million, while the suburb population brought the total to 14.1 million, making it the third-most populous metropolitan area in India. Kolkata Megalopolis is the area surrounding Kolkata Metropolitan city with additional population. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) west of the border with Bangladesh, it is the principal commercial, cultural, and educational centre of East India, while the Port of Kolkata is India's oldest operating port and its sole major riverine port. The city is widely regarded as the "cultural capital" of India, and is also nicknamed the "City of Joy". Recent estimates of Kolkata Metropolitan Area's economy have ranged from $60 to $150 billion making it third most-productive metropolitan area in India, after Mumbai and Delhi.
La Martinière Calcutta is an independent private day school located in Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal. It comprises two single-gender boys and girls schools. It was established in 1836 in accordance with the will of the French soldier of fortune and philanthropist, Major General Claude Martin. They are Christian schools, controlled by the Protestant Church of North India and independent from the Government, with English as the primary language of instruction.
The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur is a public institution established by the government of India in 1951. It is the first of the IITs to be established and is recognised as an Institute of National Importance. In 2019 it was awarded the status of Institute of Eminence.
He has worked voluntarily as a social worker since 1983, after graduating from college. He has worked with the Adivasis who are the most deprived among the poor in India. Initially he worked for the education of Adivasi children in West Bengal. He then joined Social Work and Research Centre in Tilonia, Rajasthan to work on appropriate housing technologies in 1985. However, a month later he met two people who had gone from Tilonia to work among the Adivasis in Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh and came along with them to work with the Bhil Adivasis. Those were the days when the rhetoric of participatory rural development was at its height and policy advocacy had not yet made its presence felt. So along with his colleagues Khemraj Choudhary, Amit Bhatnagar, Khemla Aujnaharia and Shankar Tadwal, he began work in the areas of Adivasi rights to forests, land and water, and development work in primary education, primary health, watershed development, joint forest management, formation of self help groups, sustainable agriculture and promotion of traditional water harvesting techniques. [10] Banerjee and his colleagues have worked to establish socio-economic and environmental justice in Madhya Pradesh and India.
The Social Work and Research Centre ("SWRC"), widely known as the Barefoot College is a voluntary organisation working in the fields of education, skill development, health, drinking water, women empowerment and electrification through solar power for the upliftment of rural people, which was founded by Bunker Roy in 1972. It is registered under Friends of Tilonia Inc.
Alirajpur is a town and a municipality in Alirajpur district in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India.
Madhya Pradesh is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Gwalior, Jabalpur, Ujjain and Sagar being the other major cities. Nicknamed the "Heart of India" due to its geographical location, Madhya Pradesh is the second largest Indian state by area and the fifth largest state by population with over 75 million residents. It borders the states of Uttar Pradesh to the northeast, Chhattisgarh to the southeast, Maharashtra to the south, Gujarat to the west, and Rajasthan to the northwest. Its total area is 308,252 km2. Before 2000, when Chhattisgarh was a part of Madhya Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh was the largest state in India and the distance between the two furthest points inside the state, Singoli and Konta, was 1500 km. Konta is presently in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh state.
This is the first trade union of Bhil Adivasis working for rights and consciousness and has fought many battles both through mass protests and legal action. [11] This organisation has secured the rights of the Adivasis to the forests and has been a member of the coalition, Campaign for Survival and Dignity [12] to enact the law for the same - The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forestdwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act. Once this Act, popularly known as the Forest Rights Act, came into force in 2007, the organisation worked actively for its implementation and has ensured forest rights for over 10,000 Adivasi families in one of the best implementations of the Act in India. This is the important work for which its sister NGO Dhas Gramin Vikas Kendra was awarded the Times of India Social Impact Award in 2011. The organisation has taken legal action to provide compensation to victims of atrocities perpetrated by non-Adivasis. [13] The organisation has also taken the Government to the Supreme Court on two occasions and landmark judgments have resulted from these legal actions. One that provides that undertrial prisoners will not be handcuffed [14] and another that has provided substantial monetary compensation to victims of silicosis contracted from working without protection in stone crushing factories. [15] This organisation also participated actively in the struggle against the Sardar Sarovar Dam being built on the River Narmada. It is also an active constituent of the Adivasi Ekta Parishad [16] which is a national forum fighting to establish the rights of the Adivasis in India. The organisation is a non-hierarchical one based on grassroots democracy and has acted as a nursery of activism as many other activists who have worked with it have later gone on to contribute to the fight for justice elsewhere and to development scholarship and journalism in India and abroad like Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Pushpendra Solanki, Chittaroopa Palit, Jayashree Bhalerao, Bernadette D’Souza, Anita Bharatiya, Vidya Shah, Ashwini Chhatre, Amita Baviskar, Deshdeep Sahadev, Kemat Gawle, Shashank Kela, Karuna, Narendra Patil, Alok Agarwal and Ravi Hemadri. [17]
Adivasi is the collective term for tribes of the Indian Subcontinent, who are considered indigenous to places within India wherein they live, either as foragers or as tribalistic sedentary communities. The term is also used for ethnic minorities, such as Chakmas of Bangladesh, Tharus of Nepal, and Bhils of Pakistan.
The Government of India, often abbreviated as GoI, is the union government created by the constitution of India as the legislative, executive and judicial authority of the union of 29 states and seven union territories of a constitutionally democratic republic. It is located in New Delhi, the capital of India.
The Supreme Court of India is the highest judicial court and the final court of appeal under the Constitution of India, the highest constitutional court, with the power of judicial review. Consisting of the Chief Justice of India and a maximum of 33 judges, it has extensive powers in the form of original, appellate and advisory jurisdictions.
Collective action for management of common pool resources has come to be acknowledged as a sine qua non not only for their conservation but also for ensuring sustainable livelihoods along with mitigation of climate change. [18] [19] The traditional communitarian labour pooling practices of the Bhil Adivasis have been revived and promoted to strengthen collective action and women have been in the forefront of such activities. Projects of Joint Forest Management, Wasteland Management and Watershed development have been carried out in over thousands of hectares which have substantially increased the forest cover and soil and water availability for the Bhil Adivasis. Traditional water harvesting practices have been revived and popularised. [20]
Climate change occurs when changes in Earth's climate system result in new weather patterns that remain in place for an extended period of time. This length of time can be as short as a few decades to as long as millions of years. The climate system receives nearly all of its energy from the sun, with a relatively tiny amount from earth's interior. The climate system also gives off energy to outer space. The balance of incoming and outgoing energy, and the passage of the energy through the climate system, determines Earth's energy budget. When the incoming energy is greater than the outgoing energy, earth's energy budget is positive and the climate system is warming. If more energy goes out, the energy budget is negative and earth experiences cooling.
Joint Forest Management often abbreviated as JFM is the official and popular term in India for partnerships in forest movement involving both the state forest departments and local communities. The policies and objectives of Joint Forest Movement are detailed in the Indian comprehensive National Forest Policy of 1988 and the Joint Forest Management Guidelines of 1990 of the Government of India.
Watershed management is the study of the relevant characteristics of a watershed aimed at the sustainable distribution of its resources and the process of creating and implementing plans, programs, and projects to sustain and enhance watershed functions that affect the plant, animal, and human communities within the watershed boundary. Features of watershed that agencies seek to manage include water supply, water quality, drainage, stormwater runoff, water rights, and the overall planning and utilization of watersheds. Landowners, land use agencies, stormwater management experts, environmental specialists, water use surveyors and communities all play an integral part in watershed management.
Through the Adivasi Riti Badhao Tola, Rahul Banerjee, has promoted the Bhili language and culture. Historically a major medium for the positing of a strong identity by any community has been its language. All literate cultures have thrived by developing a rich literature to strengthen their language. However, adivasi cultures, being non-literate have not been able to do this and so have fallen behind and face extinction. The Bhils have a rich oral cultural heritage with their creation myth, which is sung in night long celebrations, being a paean to the power and beauty of nature. The Bhil world view is one of humility wherein the human being is a minor cog in the grand scheme of nature. A conscious process of cultural revival and the creation of a new literature, plays and songs from the classical oral folklore of the Bhils has been used as a crucial DEVELOPMENTAL TOOL to help a non-literate community like that of the Bhil Adivasis to improve their articulation and self esteem and so better their socio-economic condition in fair competition over the "developmental cake" with other more well endowed communities. [21] This stress on reviving and promoting indigenous culture is also carried over to providing education to Adivasi children in schools in their own language and in the richness of their own culture. [22]
He has considerable experience in urban water and energy management and has developed a very cost efficient household system that harvests and recharges all the rain water and also treats and recycles all the wastewater while also using natural techniques of cross ventilation and green cover to save on cooling costs. [23] [24] He has also implemented a solar energy system wherein during the day energy is exported into the electricity grid while during the night energy is imported from the grid for a net export of renewable energy thus reducing the carbon emissions from the house and also contributing to overall emission reduction. [25]
Rahul works these days in association with his wife and activist Subhadra Khaperde in the important areas of renewable energy, women's reproductive health, natural resource conservation and sustainable agriculture primarily in Madhya Pradesh. He has coined a new term "Survival Edge Technology" for the combination of appropriate technologies in natural resource conservation, sustainable agriculture and renewable energy and their implementation through collective action that he is engaged in so as to counter the fascination with centralised cutting edge technologies that have created the agriculture, water, energy and climate crises. [26]
Banerjee has argued that the centralised production and distribution of electrical energy in India has become economically and environmentally unsustainable and so he advocates a switch to decentralised production of energy involving anaerobic incineration of biomass,biomethanation, solar energy and windpower as a more appropriate strategy for India [27] . In pursuance of this he has through his organisation Mahila Jagat Lihaaz Samiti implemented decentralised renewable energy projects in solar power generation. [28]
He has along with his wife Subhadra and other activist women formed the organisation Mahila Jagat Lihaaz Samiti (Majlis) to address the gynaecological health of poor women. [29] Majlis conducts an intensive communitarian programme of reproductive health intervention which involves surveys, group discussions, workshops, clinics, laboratory testing and distribution of medicines. [30] [31]
Banerjee asserts that there is a dire need for reorienting agriculture towards natural sources and making it sustainable in environmental terms. [32] [33] Through the Mahila Jagat Lihaaz Samiti, he has initiated a programme of natural resource conservation and sustainable agriculture with the use of in situ farm inputs and the promotion of indigenous seed varieties through the Climate Change Mitigation Centre established in Pandutalab village in Dewas district. [34]
Banerjee has formulated his own school of thought and action which he terms anarcho-environmentalism. According to him it has the following postulates - 1. Nature is paramount and so humans must live in harmony with nature. 2. Human organisation must be in line with Anarchist principles of stateless communities based on direct democracy and minimal individual property accumulation. 3. Women must be equal participants with men in all decision making and action 4. Unarmed Mass action is required on the ground to establish an anarcho-environmentalist civilisation. Unarmed because armed struggle is not possible by anarchist groups against the centralised and heavily armed modern state. [35] [36]
He has been awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by his alma mater Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2019 for his service to society. [37] His NGO Dhas Gramin Vikas Kendra won the Times of India Social Impact Award in 2011. [38] He has been a fellow of the MacArthur Foundation, U.S.A., Ashoka Foundation, U.S.A and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, India. He has been an active participant in various mass movements like, Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath, Narmada Bachao Andolan, Bharat Jan Andolan and Adivasi Riti Badhao Tola. He has carried out many research and implementation projects in several areas of development for such agencies as the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme, Department for International Development U.K., International Water Management Institute, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Sir Dorabjee Tata Trust, The Hunger Project, Edelgive Foundation, Action Aid and others.
The Gondi (Gōndi) or Gond people are an Adivasi group of India that speak Gondi language which is a Dravidian language and are listed as a Scheduled Tribe for the purpose of India's system of positive discrimination. They are spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, eastern Maharashtra (Vidarbha), Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha.
Bhils or Bheels are an Indo-Aryan speaking ethnic group in West India. They speak the Bhil languages, a subgroup of the Western Zone of the Indo-Aryan languages. As of 2013, Bhils were the largest tribal group in India.
Madhya Pradesh is a state of India. Music from the area includes rural folk and tribal music, ceremonial and ritual music and Indian classical music. Unlike in many parts of India, the people of Madhya Pradesh place few restrictions on who can sing which songs. With the exception of some ritualistic works, people sing songs from across ethnic and racial boundaries.
Jhabua is a district of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. The town of Jhabua is the administrative headquarters of the district.
India's tribal belt refers to contiguous areas of settlement of tribal people of India, that is, groups or tribes that remained genetically homogenous as opposed to other population groups that mixed widely within the Indian subcontinent. The tribal population in India, although a small minority, represents an enormous diversity of groups. They vary in language and linguistic traits, ecological settings in which they live, physical features, size of the population, the extent of acculturation, dominant modes of making a livelihood, level of development and social stratification. They are also spread over the length and breadth of the country though their geographical distribution is far from uniform. A majority of the Scheduled Tribe population is concentrated in the eastern, central and western belt covering the nine States of Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. About 12 percent inhabit the North-eastern region, about five percent in the Southern region and about three percent in the Northern States.
Faggan Singh Kulaste is an Indian politician and a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was sworn in as Union Minister of State in the Ministry of Steel on 30 May 2019 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Kulaste is elected as a member of the 17th Lok Sabha (2019–2024). He represents the Mandla constituency of Madhya Pradesh. He was also Minister of State in Modi government. He has previously been a member of the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th and 16th Lok Sabha.
There are 46 recognized Scheduled Tribes in Madhya Pradesh, India, three of which have been identified as 'Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PTGs)(formerly known as 'Special Primitive Tribal Groups'). The population of Scheduled Tribals (ST) is 21.1% of the state population, according to the 2011 census. Bounded by the Narmada River to the north and the Godavari River to the southeast, tribal peoples occupy the slopes of the region's mountains.
Vidya Shah is an Indian singer, musician, social activist and writer.
Bharatiya Grameen Mahila Sangh or BGMS, founded in 1955, is a non-political and non-sectarian national organization with branches all over India, in 14 states and union territories. It is affiliated with the Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW), the world's largest organization for rural women, which in turn is a consultative body for UNO, UNESCO, WHO, and ILO.
Nikhil Dey is an Indian social activist. He works for the MKSS, Suchna Evum Rozgar Adhikar Abhiyan and NCPRI. He has been actively working for Right to Information, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Lokpal bill and Right to Food and other Human Rights organisations.
National Alliance of People's Movements is an alliance of progressive people's organizations and movements in India. It is an umbrella organisation for a larger alliance integrating various civil society organisations and individuals working towards similar goals.
Mama Baleshwar Dayal was a social worker and socialist politician from India. He is remembered for his work among the Bhil tribes of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh whom he organised to fight for their rights to jal, jungle aur jameen.
Kunwar Singh Tekam is the Bharatiya Janata Party Member of the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly for Dhauhani constituency in Sidhi district. He gained 60704 (54.58%) votes in the 2008 election He gained 60130 votes in the 2013 election.
Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sangathan is a banned women's organisation based in India. The Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sangathan (KAMS) is a successor of the Adivasi Mahila Sanghathana (AMS). The foundation of the AMS was laid by the Maoists in 1986.
Tantia Bhīl was a dacoit (bandit) active in British India between 1878 and 1889. He is described very negatively as a criminal in period British accounts, but is recognized by Indians as a heroic figure. Accounts of both eras have described him as an Indian "Robin Hood".
Bhuri Bai is an Indian Bhil artist. Born in Pitol village of Jhabua district in Madhya Pradesh, Bhuri Bai belongs to the community of Bhils, the largest tribal group of India. She has won many awards including the highest state honour accorded to artists by the Madhya Pradesh government, the Shikhar Samman.
Lado Bai is a tribal artist from the Bhil tribe of Madhya Pradesh. Her work has been showcased in various exhibitions in India, France and the UK.
Survival Edge Technology is a term coined by social activist Rahul Banerjee to depict the assortment of simple technologies that can be implemented by communities through collective action to mitigate the agriculture, water, energy and climate crises that face humanity.