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GREEN REVOLUTIONS REVISITED: WOMEN, BIODIVERSITY, AND FOLK KNOWLEDGE IN RURAL PUNJAB BANDANA KAUR MALIK, MESc Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Social and Political Ecology Concentration Master’s Thesis Advisor: Prof. Amity Doolittle September 2011

Transcript of Bandana Kaur

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GREEN REVOLUTIONS REVISITED: WOMEN, BIODIVERSITY, AND FOLK KNOWLEDGE IN RURAL

PUNJAB  

 

BANDANA KAUR MALIK, MESc Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Social and Political Ecology Concentration Master’s Thesis

Advisor: Prof. Amity Doolittle

September 2011

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ABSTRACT The South Asian region of Punjab became the epicenter of the Green Revolution in the subcontinent, after private foundations sponsored a new package of high-yield seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, and farm machinery to increase agricultural production in developing world. The experiment was initially hailed as a success, but today poses considerable challenges for Punjab, as it rapidly loses its agrarian base. This research examines the lived reality of the Green Revolution from the perspective of women living in the semi-arid southern Malwa region of Punjab, an area recognized for the economic and social challenges posed to the farming community. Through several months of ethnographic interviews with seventy women in Barnala and Faridkot districts, participant observation, and document analysis on the ecology of the region, this research examines first, the traditional spaces that women occupied in the rural landscape prior to the Green Revolution and their relationship to the culture and ecology of Punjab, and second, how women are reviving traditional folk spaces in Punjab today to restore the region’s waning heritage of agricultural biodiversity and household nutritional security. I argue that women engaged in agrobiodiversity conservation can help inform a new approach to agricultural development in Punjab that recognizes complex and interrelated systems in: the content and diversity of what is produced, the inputs both human and technical used to produce these goods, and the knowledge systems upon which choices are based.

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Dedicated to my Great Grandmother Kesar Kaur

(1905-2009)

Who taught me the names of Punjab’s trees

And the fruits they bear

 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: The Green Revolution in Punjab: A Foundation Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………8 The Green Revolution and:

Gender………………………………………………………………………………………………....10 Agrobiodiversity………………………………………………………………………………………11

Folk Heritage…………..……………………………………………………………………………...13 Focus and Theoretical Framework.…………..……………………………………………………….14 Partner…………..……………………………………………………………………………………....17 Study Area…………..…………………………………………………………………………………..17 Methods …………..……………………………………………………………………………………..19 Chapter 2: Traditional Farming Systems Traditional Farming Systems …………..……………………………………………………………..14 Traditional Farming Systems and Women…………..………………………………………………..21 Women in the Fields…………..……………………………………………………………………...21 Women’s Tasks…………..…………………………………………………………………………...22 Beyond Women’s Work…………..………………………………………………………………….23 Domestic-Field Continuum.………..………………………………………………………………...24 Women and Agrobiodiversity…………..……………………………………………………………...26 Farm Biodiversity…………..………………………………………………………………………...27 Traditional Foods and Medicine…………..………………………………………………………...27 Seed Saving…………..………………………………………………………………………………..30 Agrobiodiversity and Folk Heritage…………..……………………………………………………….31 Trinjan…………..……………………………………………………………………………………..32 Theeyan…………..……………………………………………………………………………………34 Chapter 3: Women Action for Ecology Trinjan and Theeyan…………..…………………………………………………………………….....37 Recreating Folk Space…………..……………………………………………………………………37 Traditional Foods…………..…………………………………………………………………………38 Seed Exhibitions…………..…………………………………………………………………………..39 Informational Meetings…………..…………………………………………………………………..40 Changes and Impact…………..………………………………………………………………………..42 Social Cohesion…………..……………………………………………………………………….…..42 Traditional Foods…………..………………………………………………………………………...44 Home Gardens…………..……………………………………………………………………………46 Health Benefits…………..…………………………………………………………………………...48 Enjoyment and Connection to Nature…………..………………………………………………….50 Barriers to Participation…………..…………………………………………………………………...52 Heavy Workload…………..………………………………………………………………………….52

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Domestic Control…………..…………………………………………………………………………54 Education and Emigration…………..……………………………………………………………….56 Chapter 4: New Ecological Discourse Cash Crops vs. Agroecological and Household Nutritional Security…………..……………………60 Input and Labor Intensive Systems vs. Women as Farmers…………..…………………………….62 Scientism vs. Traditional Knowledge Systems…………..……………………………………………63 Chapter 5: Conclusion A Way Forward…………………………………………………………………………………..……..66 Glossary…………..……………………………………………………………………………….…..71 Works Referenced…………..……………………………………………………………………..74

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply indebted to the many who supported me through the two-year journey of researching, analyzing, writing, and editing this thesis to its completion. My greatest thanks to Waheguru, the Almighty Creator who has given me the strength to pursue this project to its final stage and for giving me support along this path, even during the most challenging moments of conducting this research. I especially thank my advisor, Dr. Amity Doolittle who gave me the time and space to discover my voice in research and who offered only patient encouragement; and Dr. Douglas Gollin for giving me the necessary understanding of agriculture to pursue this work. I also thank the Tropical Resources Institute and the Jubitz Family Foundation for supporting my two summers spent in Punjab and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies for providing endless opportunities to their students. I thank Dr. Kiranjot Kaur Brar and Dr. Dhian Kaur from the Geography Department at Punjab University in Chandigarh who showed me what intelligent, tenacious Punjabi women can do. This research would also not be not be possible without Umendra Dutt, Amanjot Kaur, Gagandeep Kaur, Gurpreet Singh, Amarjeet Kaur, Gora Singh, and Nadesson Apavou of Kheti Virasat Mission and Women Action for Ecology, and the many women in Punjab who opened their homes up to me to share their stories, their food, and their memories of a Punjab that I long to know. I also would like to thank my family and friends, who nourished my curiosity and strengthened my spirit along the way. Mom, Dad, Jasi, Ammy, Riki, Komal, thank you for supporting me in giving me the chance to follow me dreams in this life, a gift that has no comparison. Pamela Labib, Kartikeya Singh, Rebecca Steinberg, Michelle Lewis, and Kyra Busch from my Social Science Research Methods Class, for giving me clarity around my own learning. Adriane Cromer, Elaine Yu, and Roopa Krithivasan, who I spent countless nights with in our cozy New Haven home, reading, writing, laughing and finding ways to stay warm with tea and blankets, Bidisha Banerjee, Tyra Pendergrass, Yaniv Stopnitzsky, Julianne Baker Gallegos, and Marshall Duer-Balkind, whose friendship and commitments to the environment always gave me the courage to pursue my own. I would also like to thank my friends who deepened my understanding of Punjab, Simran Jeet Singh, Harmeet Kaur, Ravneet Kaur, Gunisha Kaur, Inder Narula, Sonny Singh, and Mallika Kaur, and a special thanks to Ajeet Singh Matharu, my dear friend and inspiration, whose passion for learning and life has helped me grow more in ways than I had the chance to tell him. To all of you, I am grateful.

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Chapter 1: THE GREEN REVOLUTION: A FOUNDATION 1.1 INTRODUCTION The state of Punjab is a semi-arid alluvial plain in the northwest region of present-day1 India that stretches from the foothills of the Himalayas to the desert state of Rajasthan. Historically, the region was dominated by a patchwork of mountain and riparian forests, scrub woodlands, grasslands, wetlands, deserts, and freshwater aquatic ecosystems 2 . With its agrarian history accompanied by canal infrastructure expanded under the British colonial government, Punjab was chosen as ground zero for one of the largest scientific and technological experiments in the history of the subcontinent: the Green Revolution. This Cold War Era agricultural experiment depended on heavy investments in high-yield seeds, farm machinery, intensive irrigation, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which provided the impetus via capital and technology to transform Punjab into the breadbasket of the Indian state in the mid-1960s. New technologies were accompanied by guaranteeing secure markets for wheat and paddy cash crops, free electricity to farmers, subsidized inputs such as fertilizer, and a ready supply of credit to farmers to purchase Green Revolution technologies. With these changes, the cropping intensity in Punjab increased from 126 percent to 189 percent by 2005 (Tiwana 2007, 61) The area under rice increased twelvefold under the new high yield varieties (HYVs), while the area under wheat increase two and half times during the Green Revolution decades, at the expense of other grains, cereals, pulses, and oilseeds (2007). Within decades of the introduction of Green Revolution technologies, Punjab supplied 60 percent of the wheat and 38 percent of the rice to the central pool (Singh 2007). By the mid-1990s, the immediate success of the Green Revolution came into question by as evidence emerged of the limitations of a high-input and capital-intensive model of agrarian development (Singh and Singh 2002). Specifically, stagnating farm productivity, mounting costs for production, and shrinking incomes, began taking hold across rural Punjab, while the state’s water and soil resources today are under stress with water tables averaging ten meters or below in ninety percent of the land, and soils in Punjab becoming deficient in zinc, sulfur and iron (Dhesi and Singh 2005, 71-75). Today new narratives of a ‘Punjab in Crisis’ can be found in academic literature and in government reports (Dhesi and Singh 2005, 66; Singh 2000, 1889). Similarly, though Punjab makes up 1.5 percent of the landmass of India, it uses 17 percent of the nation’s pesticides, with 75 percent of that state’s pesticides are being                                                                                                                1 Punjab, the historic region that covered five river systems in northwestern South Asia was partitioned between India and Pakistan as the British left the subcontinent, and the portion left in India, was further divided among three states of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab. 2 J.P. Richards has documented the historical changes in landuse in under the account of the changes in Punjab’s agriculture in the 19th century, before Punjab was annexed into the British empire, chronicling areas marked by scrub jungles, wastelands, and forests.

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used in the region known as Malwa where I conducted my research (Statistical Abstracts 2005). As Pritam Kaur, the sarchpanchni (female head) of Chaina Village in Faridkot said to me:

There is so much happening in Punjab. The food that they produce is in the wrong way, with urea the illnesses are really increasing. One person has cancer, another person has diabetes, another person has joint problems. All of these illnesses are happening in Punjab. It’s happening mostly to the people who eat food with pesticides and fertilizers.

1.2 THE GREEN REVOLUTION AND GENDER The Green Revolution is widely considered to have an impact on female labor in Punjab, shifting women’s work from the field to the domestic sphere (Billings and Singh 1970). Though there are fewer studies that address the process of change that occurred with the adoption of agricultural technology and the use of farm labor prior to the Green Revolution, Punjabi feminists I consulted suggested women played a larger role in farming process and had greater earning and decision-making power. Once agricultural tasks became mechanized and delegated to laborers from outside Punjab, women’s work became largely secluded to inside the home, where it has less income potential and the disparity in decision-making power over farm activities grew. Early studies on labor in Punjab such as one by Billings and Singh suggest that the impact of Green Revolution technologies on women’s labor varied by region; areas like present day Hoshiarpur had the highest proportion of women involved in agriculture, followed by districts such as Sangrur, Ferozepur, and Bhatinda in the southwestern region of Punjab, and while regions in the central and northern regions of Punjab such as Ludhiana, Jullandhar, Gurdaspur, Amritsar, and Patiala had the lowest participation of women in agriculture post-Partition (Billings and Singh 1970, 170). Women’s work in agriculture too, varied from region to region, with work mostly involving planking and leveling the soil, spreading farmyard manure, applying water to fields, preparing and sowing seeds, harvesting wheat, cotton picking, corn decobbing, cane stripping, and groundnut harvesting3 (Billings and Singh 1970). \ In the Southern region of Punjab known as Malwa, where I conducted my research, rural women’s activities today are largely confined to the household and involve dairying, livestock care, and domestic duties, such as cooking and childcare (Kaur 2006). Women still contribute to crop production in Punjab in the northern hilly regions where women actively participate in agriculture and in southwestern Punjab, where women pick cotton due to the lack of mechanization of cotton farming in this region (Kaur 2006). Though women in Punjab contribute significantly to subsistence and commercial work, gender biases in agricultural policy and the national government census tend to obscure the contributions made by women in the rural workforce (Kaur 2005).

                                                                                                               3 It must be noted that because earlier data is based on census studies and specific pre-defined agricultural activities by women, a full picture of their involvement in agriculture and their understanding of Punjab’s ecological and varietal diversity remains absent from earlier studies.

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1.3 THE GREEN REVOLUTION AND AGROBIODIVERSITY Agricultural Biodiversity, or agrobiodiversity is a subset of biodiversity and is defined as “the genetic variation among species, breed, cultivars, and individuals of animal, plant, and microbial species that have been domesticated, often including their immediate and wild relatives” (Heywood 1995, 6). Agrobiodiversity acknowledges the importance of biological diversity in plants consumed by humans, including wild varieties, which are the naturally occurring edible plants that were later domesticated as by farmers forming the broad array of crops that were grown on fields as farmers’ varieties (Heywood 1995). During the Green Revolution, Western agricultural scientists developed high yield varieties (HYVs) from the genetic material of indigenous crops. HYVs (which at times have been called high response varieties or high input varieties due to their dependency on chemical inputs) are often distinguished by their short stem, which allows the edible portion of the crop to absorb the bulk of the nutrients thus reaching a higher yield (Dalrymple 1975). With the emphasis on crops based on altered genetic material, farmers’ varieties and the basis of agrobiodiversity in Punjab have nearly disappeared from farmers’ fields (Tiwana 2007). In Punjab, archeological evidence of the ancient Harappan Civilization suggests that the region was once home to a diverse range of cultivated farmers’ varieties including, wheat, barley, and millets which were suited to the ecologic and edaphic conditions of the region4 (Weber 1998). Few studies, however, have attempted to examine the issue of agrobiodiversity in Punjab today, often due to the intensity of the Green Revolution in this region and the subsequent dearth of information on agrobiodiversity in Punjab. According to the Punjab State Council for Science and Technology, in the year 1960-61, just before the advent of the revolution in plant breeding, forty one varieties of wheat, thirty seven varieties of rice, four varieties of maize, nineteen varieties of pulses, nine varieties of oil seeds, ten varieties of cotton were reported to be in use in Punjab; these were a mix of indigenous varieties and HYVs (Tiwana 2007). By the late 1990s, Green Revolution varieties had been so widely adopted by farmers, that only five varieties of wheat, two varieties of rice, seven varieties of maize, and five varieties of millet are grown throughout the state. Other varieties of pulses are grown, however these are all HYVs (2007). The wide use of high yield variety seeds, and the economic impetus beyond their dissemination has put Punjab’s agrobiodiversity in a precarious position. 1.4 THE GREEN REVOLUTION AND FOLK HERITAGE Though there is little information on the impact of the Green Revolution on folk heritage in Punjab, there has been some effort to describe how agricultural development and neoliberalism have affected folk artisans in rural South Asia at large. According to anthropologist Madul Islam, folk culture has experienced a characteristic shift with the opening of world markets to trade and the privatization of the public sector. He writes, “As globalization progresses, the global deflation in the prices of agricultural crops, the process of alienation of agricultural land, expropriation of small and poor peasants, losses in agricultural income, concentration of ownership in land and speculation of land has been                                                                                                                4 As Weber suggests the agricultural system included barley, wheat, oats, peas, lentil, chickpeas, jujube, mustard, and grass peas and was initially found in northwestern South Asia, mainly in Baluchistan, Sind, Punjab, Swat and Kashmir.

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accelerated...All of this certainly disrupts the material base for rural cultural forms.” (Islam 2006, 66). Islam instead avers that folk culture is not simply an artifact that can be divorced from its rural environment. He writes, “We need a materialist conception of culture, not as a spiritual or religious heritage, but as a set of material practices though which people live and produce the meaning of their lives” (Islam 2006, 49). Thus the folk culture this paper attempts to conceptualize includes song, dance, idioms, as well as clothing, food, and daily work, livestock and the relationship between all of these.

Though there is a dearth of discussion on the decline of folk heritage academic literature in Punjab, the elderly Punjabi women I interacted with described a process whereby the rural folk cultural forms they inherited as children, including the games they played and the festivals they celebrated, have since shifted from the rural landscape to schools and urban centers, where they are presented in altogether different mediums. A large majority of the women I interviewed described the festival Theeyan as having eroded away in their native villages. Theeyan is a women’s festival that would take place during sawan da mahina (monsoon season), when young brides would return to their parents’ village from, sing songs related to the season and enjoy foods that were in harvest, such as kheer (rice pudding). Here, again when situating the decline of folk culture in Punjab I borrow from Islam’s perspective that the folk cultural forms are not limited to festivals and popular artistic forms but encompass the larger rural heritage of Punjab including traditional knowledge systems and their relationship to dynamic agricultural processes such agricultural biodiversity. I theorize that these elements of folk heritage have experienced dramatic shifts in the post-Green Revolution and globalization era. 1.5 FOCUS AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Though studies on agrobiodiversity have appeared in other regions of the South Asian subcontinent, few of these studies have been conducted in Punjab. This study is an attempt to connect issues related to agrobiodiversity with the larger body of literature surrounding agricultural development in Punjab. In addition to this introductory chapter, this paper is further composed of four additional chapters. In Chapter 2: Traditional Farming Systems, I examine how women in Punjab recall the relationship between women’s spaces, agrobiodiversity, and folk heritage before the Green Revolution and neoliberal reforms. In Chapter 3: Women Action for Ecology, I look at a case study of a contemporary effort to revive traditional women’s folk spaces in the rural landscape to preserve agrobiodiversity and household nutritional security. In Chapter 4: A New Ecological Discourse, I examine how the experience of women engaged in the Women Action for Ecology campaign can contribute to a new ecological discourse in Punjab today. In Chapter 5: Conclusion, I offer specific policy provisions that can aid in bringing women’s knowledge of agrobiodiversity into policymaking. I argue that the experience of women engaged in ‘Women Action for Ecology’ campaign can help inform a new approach to agricultural development in Punjab that recognizes complex and interrelated systems in: the content and diversity of what is produced, the inputs both human and technical used to produce these goods, and the knowledge systems upon which choices are based. To do this, I use three main theoretical frameworks situate the lives of Punjabi women and their relationship to agrobiodiversity in the post-Green Revolution neoliberal economic state of Punjab: Bina Agarwal’s feminist environmentalism, Edward R. Carr’s postmodern food security theory, as well as Vinay Gidwani’s (critique of) post-development theory.

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Environmental economist and feminist Bina Agarwal examines the construction of ecofeminism as an oft cited discourse on women’s relationship with the environment, though she points to several of its shortcomings, perhaps most poignantly that women’s relationship with the environment in ecofeminist discourse is seen as uniform across social and economic strata, and that much of this relationship is based on ideological constructions of women and nature. Instead she poses an alternative feminist environmentalist theory, suggesting that, women and men’s relationship with nature needs to be understood as rooted in their material reality, in their specific forms of interaction with the environment (Agarwal 1992, 145) She writes, ‘In this conceptualization, therefor, the link between women and the environment can be seen as a structured by a given gender and class (/caste/race) organization of productions, reproduction and distribution (Agarwal 1992, 127)’ In other words, women’s relationship with the environment is not based on any abstract emotional/biological connection, but rather comes from women’s experience of the environment in the gendered spaces they occupy, which, is further distinguished by patterns or race, class, and caste and other distinctions. Geographer and anthropologist Edward R. Carr in his postmodern of food security theory acknowledges the importance of society and local knowledge in the debate around food systems, which actually help further the goal of food security. He examines the transformation that food security studies have undergone in their conceptual lifetime from, “an initial view of food as a product of reliable supplies of food, to a growing contemporary emphasis on food as a single input in diffuse local livelihood strategies” (Carr 2006, 15). In extending postmodern theories of power and knowledge to the debate around food outcomes, he suggests that, “A focus on power and knowledge allows us to integrate society, especially local perceptions and knowledge, and biophysical/economic conditions in a manner that both acknowledges the highly contextual causal links between social and material circumstances and livelihood strategies/decisions seen in difference parts of the world” (Carr 2006, 16). In this case, integrating Punjabi women’s perceptions of food security in agricultural analyses allows us to move beyond a sole focus on inputs and outputs, but acknowledges the way local food outcomes and decisions shape and are shaped by local perspectives. Vinay Gidwani, in his study of irrigation systems in Western Gujarat challenges post-development theorists’ often tenuous anti-development stance by arguing that development can be liberatory in particular time-space contexts. He writes, “As development planners and scholars interested in tackling issues of poverty, inequality, and deprivation, we use our theoretical arsenal to expose and contest capricious and disempowering forms of development and imagine alternative strategies” (Gidwani 2002). Thus in this analysis, I try not to essentialize Punjabi women’s traditional knowledge as the answer to the challenges posed by the Green Revolution to disengage from the development process at large. Rather, I examine how alternative pathways that emphasize women’s access to social spaces, agrobiodiversity, and culture may provide some liberatory norms which were to be the promise of the Green Revolution, while allowing space for a dialogue on the need for modernist approaches to economic development for the farming community as some of the current economic studies on Punjab suggest. 1.6 PARTNER Due to the challenges geography and language that I anticipated while conducting interviews in rural Punjab, I partnered with the NGO in Punjab Kheti Virasat Mission, which translates as ‘Farming

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Heritage Mission.’ Since 2005, the organization has been working with farmers to conserve natural resources and promotes farmer self-sufficiency through kudrati kheti or natural farming. The techniques and methods for natural farming rely on mixed cropping, natural farm-based fertilizers and pest control, and the use of indigenous varieties of crops (Apavou 2010). The organization’s main focus is on the southern Malwa region of Punjab, and particularly in the three districts of Faridkot, Barnala, and Patiala, where a subset of farmers have embraced natural farming on either a portion or all of their farm. The organization is heavily involved in environmental advocacy work in Punjab, and specifically in advocating for a method of farming based on the preservation of biodiversity and indigenous varieties. \ In 2008, Kheti Virasat Mission initiated a campaign called, ‘Women Action for Ecology’ which works to increase rural women’s participation in the movement towards sustainable agriculture in Punjab. Women Action for Ecology accomplishes this through two main methods, first, by reviving traditional Punjabi folk spaces known as Trinjan and Theeyan for women to share traditional agriculture and food related knowledge and second, by working directly with Punjabi women to encourage the cultivation of pesticide-free fruits, vegetables, and cereals in courtyards. According to the organization, Women Action for Ecology is an “effort to mobilize women to appreciate their traditional wisdom and role in the preservation and conservation of the environment in Punjab” (Apavou 2010). 1.7 STUDY AREA

The study was conducted in the Chaina Village, Faridkot District and Bhotna Village, Barnala District; where my partner organization Kheti Virasat Mission is most active. Because the intention of this study was to examine elder Punjabi women’s knowledge of agrobiodiversity as well as their involvement in reviving women’s traditional knowledge in agriculture, I chose to focus my interviews in the villages that Women Action for Ecology had already worked with to examine women’s relationship with the environment both historically and presently. Faridkot and Barnala districts are located in the southern Malwa region, which lies below the Sutlej River and borders the state of Rajasthan. The climate of Faridkot district is subtropical, semi-arid and warm, receiving little rainfall with the exception of the monsoon season from July to September (Pandey and Gupta 2007). Faridkot District spans roughly 171 square kilometers and is home to 171 villages with two larger urban centers at Faridkot and Jaitu, while the cultivable area is roughly 1,258.51 square kilometers and forest area covers roughly 860 square kilometers (2007). The village of Chaina is within the region of Jaitu, which is best known for the staple cotton crop. Barnala District was formally carved out of Sangrur District in 2006. The climate of district is characterized as dry with a hot summer and cold winter. The monsoon season in Barnala usually begins at the end of June through September, with July and August being the wettest months of the year (Singh and Gupta 2007). Barnala District has a total population of 96,624 according to the 2011 India Census. Though data for the District of Barnala is lacking, the total cultivable area of Sangrur District is 4,400 square kilometers with 70 square kilometers under forest area (2007). The principle crops of the region are rice and wheat and the area as a whole is known for its declining water level and land quality. 1.8 METHODS

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This research was conducted during the summers of 2009 and 2010 in Punjab, with the majority of the study researched during the summer of 2010. Seventy semi-structured, qualitative interviews were completed with Punjabi women from Faridkot and Barnala districts using snowball sampling. In both districts, I was accompanied by coordinators associated with the Women Action for Ecology program for the purposes of translation and to encourage discussion with the women. Interviews were conducted through the month of July through September 2010 through in house visits. Four participant observations were conducted, one during the summer of 2009 at the women’s festival for safe foods at the All Pingalwara Charitable Society in the city of Amritsar, and also of three women’s meetings in the villages, one which took place in 2009 before the first village-level traditional food festivals and two that took places in 2010. The inhouse visits, which form the basis of this research, were conducted with women who ranged from adolescents to elderly women who have seen the shifts that have taken place in Punjab since the Green Revolution. In addition, I interviewed a number of government officials associated with the Punjab Organic Farming Council and the Punjab State Council for Science and Technology, and attended meetings between farmers, environmentalists, and government officials on issues related to the larger post-Green Revolution agrarian challenges facing the state.

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Chapter 2: TRADITIONAL FARMING SYSTEMS I began my research on a day in early June, with the sun beaming over the Punjab plains thickening the haze that hovered over the fields. With some insight into Women Action for Ecology’s work to revive women’s traditional knowledge5 of agriculture and folk heritage in villages, I decided the best place to begin examining the relationship between Punjabi women, agricultural biodiversity, and folk heritage in traditional farming systems would be with elder Punjabi women themselves. This initially proved to be a challenge; in the beginning when I spoke to several university professors in Punjab about the relationship between women with agrobiodiversity, I was looked upon with a degree of disbelief. How are you going to research that? I was asked, since Punjabi historical narratives are laced with images of male farmers, suggesting that farming in Punjab is, and always was a male dominated activity. My conversations with elderly Punjabi women, however, seemed to suggest that they too were central to farming processes, obscured by the almost intransigent focus on a masculinized Punjabi rurality. The women I interviewed in Faridkot and Barnala districts described their role harvesting crops, including traditional varieties of wheat, millet, and cotton, along with sugarcane and common vegetables, fetching water from the fields, processing food, and saving seeds. While some women affirmed that they actively participated in field work, recalling farm varieties, harvesting techniques, and the landscape, other women simply affirmed that that farm was always a place that they could access the farm as women without restrictions on their mobility.

2.1 TRADITIONAL FARMING SYSTEMS AND WOMEN Women in the Fields As I sat down with elder Punjabi women during the initial set of household visits, I was immediately surprised by the extent to which they described working in the fields. Though I imagined women would be able to describe some of their farm tasks, women were quite assertive and proud of the work they had done in the fields in their childhood. Shinder Kaur, a seventy-two year mother who still worked on the farm today with her two sons in Faridkot District described her experience working in the fields during her childhood: Bandana: Who used to harvest the crops when you were young?

                                                                                                               5  Traditional knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) will be explored in greater detail later in this study. Here I refer to traditional knowledge more generally as knowledge of natural systems that is inherited through previous generations.

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Shinder: At that time, everyone used to harvest the crops together, the entire family used to go together to the farm. They didn’t bring labor along, they did it on their own. Girls would go and boys would go. They used to sit together and plant the crops and harvest the crops. Bandana: Do you mean that children would plant the crops too? Shinder: They would come join us too, using the tools that we used on the farm. Whatever you told children to do. Now the children don’t do work in the fields anymore, because people don’t encourage children to learn and understand these things. Bandana: So brothers and sisters used to do work together? Shinder: Yes, chacha, chachi, thai, thaee6, the entire family would be working in the farms together as a family.

Shinder Kaur’s memories of working on the farm were echoed by a number of elder Punjabi women, who admitted that, because fieldwork was much more difficult earlier and required the physical labor of the entire family; women were much more integrated into the farming process at an early age. As Sociologist Cornelia B. Flora describes in Women and Agriculture, “[In peasant agriculture] everyone worked in agricultural production, young and old, men and women, boys and girls. But there was a substantial division of labor by sex and age. What women did in one culture, men might do in another. Men and women’s work was highly complementary – each depended on the work of the other to complete their agricultural endeavors (1985, 6).” A number of the elder Punjabi women I spoke to affirmed this attitude through their descriptions of working in the fields during their youth, with men and women continuing with their respective tasks side by side.

Women’s Tasks

Traditional tasks performed by rural Punjabi women included harvesting traditional varieties of wheat, maize, cotton and vegetables; grinding cereals into flour and preparing them for household use; caring for livestock which included milking cows and buffalo and preparing cow dung for fuel and fertilizer; and fetching water from the communal water pump which was in the fields. Karamjeet Kaur, a woman of age seventy-five in Barnala District, shared her perspectives on women’s tasks and the physical work she did in her youth:

Bandana: In the early times what was farming like for a woman like you? What types of work were you involved in? Karamjeet: Before it was good. We used to get milk from the cows and also make goha (cowdung) cakes to fuel the chula (traditional stove) and to use as fertilizer. We still do this today but now we don’t have as much livestock and they are different what we had earlier. Then we would go and pick cotton, and along with us the women would make roti (flatbreads) for about twenty people and bring it along with us to the farm. We would return from the farm, and make some more food. Then we also used to pick challia (corn cobs) from the stems, we used to harvest kanak (wheat), and also pick kapah (indigenous cotton) and put it out to dry. We also used to fetch water from the nalka (tap), because

                                                                                                               6Punjabi family members: younger paternal uncle, younger paternal aunt, elder paternal aunt, elder paternal uncle

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back then we had no borewells. The women used to do this work because we could not get water from inside the home.

Karamjeet Kaur’s description further highlights the physical work that Punjabi women were involved in; harvesting indigenous crops, caring for livestock, bringing food to the farm, and fetching water from the fields. Women like Karamjeet often suggested that their day was full from morning to evening and that their work often supplemented the work being done by their male counterparts on the farm. Though a number of middle aged and younger Punjabi women that I interviewed would quiet their voice to male members of the family when speaking about farming, elder women often spoke proudly of the tasks they performed, with descriptions of the physical labor they were involved in. Beyond Women’s Work While work in the fields was somewhat differentiated by gender, the Punjabi women elders I spoke to were still quite observant of traditional farming practices at large from plowing, to crop rotation, to seeding patterns, to pests due to their presence on the farm. Women like Jind Kaur, a woman of roughly sixty years from Faridkot district offered a more precise description of the farming processes, including methods of seeding, cultivation, harvesting, and the crops planted:

Bandana: Did you used to work in the fields? Jind: Yes, absolutely, I did a lot of work in my lifetime. I picked kapah (indigenous cotton), broke marcha (spices) from the stem, brought vegetables like mooli (turnip) and gajar (carrots) back home. We used to do a lot of work like this in the fields. We used to harvest the ganna (sugarcane), and bring it home to make cane sugar. This is the type of work that we would do. Bandana: So you remember what farming used to be like? Jind: Yes, yes. At that time we didn’t have a tractors, only had oxen to pull the carts. We used to put roori (traditional fertilizer) or goha (cowdung) on the crops after collecting it in one area. These were the native cows. We didn’t use any pesticides because we didn’t really have pests. Whatever pests there were the birds would eat. Now we don’t have those birds. Bandana: Do you remember how they planted the crops? Jind: In winter they planted corn, millet, oats, and in the summer, wheat. There were the main crops but then people planted crops according to what they needed, whether it was mung (green gram), chole (chickpeas), kapah (indigenous cotton), or anything that they might need in the home.

Hence, women, like Jind, with her knowledge of cropping patterns, fertilizers, and pest control, possessed a broader understanding of agricultural processes due to the sense of mobility that traditional farming systems gave them. Similarly, fifty eight year old Agya Kaur from Faridkot District, spoke to me about the process of crop rotation on the farm: Bandana: How would farmers rotate the crops?

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Agya: We would alternate between millet and corn, which were the winter crops, and wheat, which was the summer crop. In the summer time they would plant millet and corn on half the field, then they would harvest it. Then on the same field they would plant wheat. We also would plant other crops like moongphali (peanuts) and chhole (chickpeas), which would keep the soil healthy.

Like many of the elderly Punjabi women I spoke to, Agya knew much more about the farming process from planting to harvesting to post-harvesting activities than of middle and younger generations. This is not to say that middle and younger generations lacked knowledge about agriculture systems; rather, their knowledge about agriculture tended to be proportional to their work in farming today. While elder women could narrate agricultural processes that extended from the field to the home as well as post-harvest activities such as processing and sales, younger women instead possessed knowledge of work within the home, such as dairying and food preparations, and the general hardships facing farmers in Punjab today. Domestic-Field Continuum Though contemporary descriptions of rural Punjab often present a clear delineation between domestic work and fieldwork, Punjabi women elders often spoke of these spheres as interrelated. With homes were made of mud and chaff and strips of wood (kacha) instead of out of cement (pakka), the domestic space enabled women to move more freely between home and the field. Harvinder Kaur, a sixty seven year old woman from Barnala district recalled the less intense nature of domestic work in her youth: Bandana: What was work like at home earlier?

Harvinder: At that time, there was not as much kitchen work, just make chutney (sauces), make rotis (flatbreads), lots of lassi (yogurt drink), dahi (yogurt), makhni (butter), put it together to eat and take it to the field, and do work there. We used to make cha (tea) in the fields. Then the women would come home in the evening when they had to make roti (flatbreads) and sabji (vegetables) .

According to Harvinder Kaur, domestic activities such as food preparation were not entirely divorced from work in the fields as they tend to be in contemporary Punjab. Though women had the responsibility of preparing food for their families, elderly Punjabi women suggested that meals were simpler and the housework was lighter, allowing them to move between the home and the village environs. In some cases, elder women I spoke to suggested that men used to be more accustomed to doing certain tasks in the home themselves. Similarly, seventy two year old Kuljeet Kaur of Barnala District mentioned that even rearing children did not confine her to the home in earlier times, and that her infant children regularly accompanied her to the farm. As a young mother without a mother-in-law to tend to the children as she performed her fieldwork, Kuljeet Kaur would carry her child along with her in her arms:

Kuljeet: All of the work I would do on my own. If I was going to throw away goha (cow dung), I’d bring my children along with me in my arms. If I was coming back from the field, I would carry the basket on my head, and at the same time, carry my child with me in the other arm!

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My conversations with Harvinder and Kuljeet suggested that women tended to have a greater mobility before the Green Revolution and the expansion of agriculture into world markets. According to their descriptions, domestic work often existed as an extension of women’s labor in the fields rather then a separate and exclusive space for women. Though many of the women that I spoke to later on suggested that their domestic work was strenuous and limited their mobility, elder women suggested that domestic work was more integrated with the other activities on the farm and the other families in their village.

 2.2. WOMEN AND AGROBIODIVERSITY    In addition to seeding, cultivating, and harvesting agricultural crops, elder Punjabi women described their work in processing farm goods for domestic use. As aforementioned, domestic and fieldwork performed by women before the Green Revolution diverged from contemporary conceptions; hence, because of women’s access to a range of spaces in the village, elder women also had a greater knowledge of Punjab’s agrobiodiversity and traditional foods from the field to the household. Elderly Punjabi women described the activities that gave them awareness of the properties of farmer’s varieties: grinding and processing grains and cereals with traditional technologies, preparing traditional foods for household consumption, using foods and plants for medicinal purposes, and conserving seeds for the harvests. Farm Biodiversity When I asked women about the biodiversity of the rural landscape before the Green Revolution, elder Punjabi women often described the crops, animals, and vegetation that lined the fields in their villages. Women such as seventy four year old Baljeet Kaur in Faridkot District spoke of the biological diversity she observed while working in the fields during her youth:

Bandana: Which crops do you remember seeing in your youth? Baljeet: During that time we used to have crops like makki (corn), bajra (millet), jowar (sorghum) in the wintertime, while in the summer time with would have kanak (wheat), with oats occasionally. We also had moongphali (peanuts), til (sesame seeds), alsi (flaxseeds), and pulses like moth (mung bean), maa (black lentils), masur (red lentils), kale chhole (black chickpeas), goware (green beans), as well as tare mire. The wheat used to be of one color, almost similar to millet. Bandana: Did you have rice? Baljeet: No not at all, only in the rainy season we would have rice. Bandana: Were each of these planted separately or together? Baljeet: If they were planting something like bajra (millet), they usually planted chhole (chickpeas) with it, whatever we had we would plant together. At that time they didn’t plant any rice, rice came much later7.

                                                                                                               7  Here Baljeet Kaur refers to the paddy crop that has been intensively farmed in Punjab in the post-Green Revolution era in a wheat-paddy seasonal rotation.

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In addition to the biodiversity in the fields, Baljeet Kaur continued to described the diversity in fauna and flora that she recalled as a child, such as species of birds that have since become extinct and native trees that were in declined as agricultural land expanded across the plains: Bandana: Do you remember any of the other animals on the farm?

Baljeet: Yes, we had chaha raha, chirriya, kabutar, kaa, tote (bird species). When we used to pick cotton, they made such a loud sound! We had one sparrow called a doomni chirri, which was another bird that was less black, we had so many mor, gatara, khogar, illa girj, sap, hiran, rojh (faunal diversity). Bandana: And trees? Baljeet: Yes. We had tahlia, belia, nim, beri, tut, dodi, jamun, and amrud (tree species)8.

Women such as Baljeet Kaur, suggested that the effect of the Green Revolution on the diversity of animals and plants had been tremendous. Many of the animals women recalled seeing in their youth no longer exist in rural Punjab. Without question, almost all the women I interviewed on the change in the landscape and the diversity of floral and fauna in Punjab would say to me, “The old atmosphere, we don’t have that any more. Zamana badalgia, the times are totally different.” Traditional Foods and Medicine In addition to farm biodiversity, my interviews with elder Punjabi women revealed their detailed knowledge of agrobiodiversity through their role in processing and preparing foods and medicines. As rural sociologist Carolyn Sachs writes, “Due to gender divisions of labor and access to resources, women and men have different relationships with plants and their seeds. In most situations, women have the major responsibility of reproductive labor, including feeding the family. In agricultural households these activities generally include the majority of subsistence crops after they leave the fields” (1997, 7) In Punjab, post postharvest activities that women commonly engaged in included grain storage, food processing, food preparation, and seed saving. The Punjabi elders I interviewed were able to provide descriptions of processing the food immediately from the farm in preparation for domestic use. Women described processing crops by grinding them on chakki (millstone), to prepare them for food preparation. Gurcharan Kaur, a woman of age seventy-five from Barnala district, described the process of harvesting corn, sorghum, and millet, from the farm:

Bandana: What types of work did women do in the village when you were young? Gurcharan: We used to break corn, sorghum, and millet, off the step with others.

After picking cotton, we would grind it on the chakki (millstone) Then we used to work about ten of us, then we would come back and make makki di roti (corn flatbread). At that time we didn’t go to school, then we would fill up our and give them lassi (yogurt drink). In the morning we would give them lassi and saag (cooked

                                                                                                               8 I leave Baljeet’s memories of the birds and trees in her original words, out of concern that the actual names of the species might be lost if I translate them into their botanical names without further verification with botanists in Punjab.

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greens). As Gurcharan Kaur describes, when women came back from the farm they would grind crops in for household use, which women described as an important and physically demanding aspect of women’s work in traditional farming systems. The richest descriptions elder women provided on the use of agrobiodiversity from fields was through descriptions of traditional foods. Women described preparing a broad range of food from indigenous varieties that are no longer available in Punjab, including roti (flatbread) made out of millet, sorghum, corn, seasonal crops, such as moth and mungi dal (mung beans), saag (cooked greans), alu (potatoes), mattar (peas), kichdi (millet porridge) and bhoot pinni (round sweets): Bandana: What types of food did you used to eat?

Paramjit: We used to have really different types of food but the base was corn, millets, sorghum, or wheat. They were simpler foods then, and we usually ate them at roti (flattened bread), dalia (oats), we, ate gulgule (fried sweets), mattiya (savory snack), pure (flatbread), pinniya (sweets), malpure (sweetened flatbread), bajra di kichdi (millet porridge). When we ate many of the common subjis (vegetables) you see today, with lots of saag (spinach) as well as sharbat (ice drink).

Similarly, Gurdeep Kaur, a fifty five year old woman from Faridkot district described the long process of making moth bajra di kichdi, the traditional dish made of millet and pulses boiled together with spices: Gurdeep: In each home you saw kichdi (porridge). Bandana Kaur: So how did they used to cook it?

Gurdeep: We would take the bajra (millet) and put it in the ookli (mortar and pestle). We would add hot water and then we would take some tools to press the bajra (millet) quite strongly. When it would be well pressed then we would take it out to dry. When it would dry, then again we would put it in the ookli and press it. In each home we used to have an ookli but these days barely anyone has it. Then you would put it out to dry, and then put it in the ookli again. Then we would let it sit for some time. When evening would come, then we would add ghio (butter) or makhan (butter) to it.

Bandana: It sounds very tasty. Gurdeep: My maternal grandmother used to live with us. She used to start in the morning and cook it until about 1:30 in the afternoon. However slow you cook it, the better it tastes.

In addition to traditional foods, traditional medicines were also widely used in Punjab before modern medicines were not available from village suppliers and doctors. Women such as seventy year old Manjeet Kaur from Faridkot District described the use of the use of the seed alsi (flaxseed) for sickness during the rainy season and the used of tulsi (basil) for coughs:

Bandana: Do you remember any of the medicines you would use at home? Manjeet: Yes, I remember many! Alsi (flaxseed) was a small, black seed. There used to be no medicines back then, and so because we had so much rain, we used to give them alsi to

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drink desi ghio (clarified butter). The kids used to eat panjiri9. This was usually that we did when they became ill during the rainy season.

Bandana: Are there any others? Manjeet: Yes, if someone had a cough we would usually offer them tulsi (basil) which would make them feel better after some time.

During my time in Punjab, I still sensed a sense of skepticism from women in the village on the use of modern medicines. In some cases women would be going to doctors for medicines to treat extreme pain, however, a number of women still tried other remedies at home, such as the use of oils, seeds, and plants, before resorting to modern medicine. Seed saving  Seed management is considered to be a central task performed by women in traditional farming systems. Women in a number of areas were traditionally involved in the management and use of seed varieties for food and agriculture. In Punjab, though the process of seed saving, Punjabi women acquired a different knowledge set on seed varieties. Sixty five year old Mehtab Kaur of Faridkot district described bringing the crops back to their home, and then, storing the seeds in a pouch for reuse:

Bandana: Aunty Ji, where did you get to get the seeds from for the form? Mehtab: We used to keep these in our home. If we planted mungi (mung bean), then we used to put the seed in a pouch and save it there. We would take the kernel of wheat or corn, and keep it safely inside. When it was time for the new crop, we would take these seeds out and plant them.

As Mehtab Kaur describes, the practice of seed saving allowed farmers to conserve indigenous varieties of crops, including the major cereal crops like corn, as well as the minor crops like pulses. Similarly, Shinder Kaur describes women’s practices in managing the seeds from the harvest crops to the next planting. Bandana: Where did you used to get the seeds for planting?

Shinder: We used to remove the seeds from the crops when we would bring them to the house. We used to take it from the house and plant it, however much we needed. Bandana: Did you have to choose the seeds? Shinder: We pressed all of it, and everything became one. When we cleaned up, then it would separate and we used to keep the seeds with us. If the seeds were suitable for the livestock, then we would also give some to them. Bandana: Did you plant all the seeds like this? Shinder: Yes, we used to keep all the seeds like this in our home.

Shinder Kaur describes how women used to be managers in traditional seeds for the farm. After bringing the crops from the farm, and pressing them together, women would gather the seeds that fell when they were preparing the crops for household use or sale. When they cleaned up the crop, they would keep

                                                                                                               9 A sweet dish made of whole wheat flower, butter and sugar.

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some of the seeds on the side for planting. Women also did not recall when they discontinued the practice of saving seed, a sign of the erosion of seed saving practices throughout Punjab. 2.3 AGROBIODIVERSITY AND FOLK HERITAGE Historical narratives of Punjabi women’s folk heritage are rich. In Imaging Life in a Punjab Village, Chaman and Sawyer write:

In terms of creative expression… women had more opportunities than men. People of both sexes could participate in performance art, formally or in their daily lives: singing, dancing, or telling stories. But most visual artistry was in the hands of women, because most of it was devised for the home and the body in garments. Moreover, foods prepared by women played a major role in festivals and food sacrifices at shrines (2004, 125).

Women’s folk heritage is still celebrated in Punjab today, from Punjabi folk art, dance, and drama, to seasonal celebrations. Though, here I would like to reiterate that there is less documentation that looks at folk heritage beyond cultural ritual/stage performance, but rather as a dynamic part of the material relationship between rural people and their agrarian surroundings. In other words, the full expression of folk forms seemed to emerge from the vibrancy of the agrarian surroundings, the very base of which has declined over Green Revolution decades. Women in Faridkot and Barnala Districts in particular spoke of the folk traditions of Trinjan and Theeyan. Elder women described Trinjan as a time when women would gather at night to spin the kapah (cotton) they picked from the fields on their charkhas (spinning wheels) to produce goods for the house. Theeyan, while is still celebrated in some villages in Punjab today, is a time when women return to their parents’ village during the sawan da mahina (monsoon season) and celebrate by tying a swing to one of the main village trees, singing, dancing and preparing food10. A deeper look at the relationship between agriculture and Punjabi women’s folk reveal how traditional knowledge of Punjab’s agrobiodiversity was preserved and passed down through these traditions. Trinjan Elder women provided detailed descriptions of Trinjan, a rural tradition that is related to the native varieties of kapah or cotton grown in the Malwa region of Punjab. Traditionally, after women harvested cotton from the fields, they would together late at night at someone’s home with their spinning wheels (charkhas) and spin spools of yarn. From this yarn they would make a variety of items, including manje (cots), kes (bed coverings), dariya (rugs), nale (pant strings), and other clothing items make from khaddr (cotton). Women like Tej Kaur described, that earlier when she was a child, Trinjan used to happen much more often when social bonds were stronger in the village:

Bandana: Before when women used to get together what would they do?

                                                                                                               10  Though other folk festivals were celebrated in Punjab such as Lohri, which took place as spring lead into winter, Trinjan and Theeyan were some of the major folk traditions centered around women.  

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Tej: Back then our homes were kache (made of mud), so we would just get together and work. We used to do kadai (embroidery) together. We used to spin together while sitting in someone’s home. We would have cha-pani (tea and water) that place and we used to sit there and enjoy it. But now time has passed. Bandana: Earlier you did a lot of work with your hands? Tej: Yes, I used to made clothes from cotton, and spin my spinning wheel. After sitting together for water and tea, we used to eat and drink together. We used to many everything at home before. Earlier the times were good. Now everything has changed. It is now kalyug (dark age).

My conversation with Tej Kaur revealed the sense of closeness that women felt earlier when they gathered for Trinjan to spin cotton on their spinning wheels. Much like Tej Kaur, women suggested that this closeness was also cultivated through traditions like Trinjan in a reciprocal relationship, and that at some point in time, this pattern was lost. When I asked women why Trinjan came to an end, they often responded that, women no longer spin cotton like they used to and that, the relationships had become more distant.

Similarly, Gurdeep Kaur and her friend Agia Vanti not only offered a good description of Trinjan, but also described the traditional foods that women would eat while gathering together with their charkhas (spinning wheels) through the night:

Gurdeep: In our childhood, Trinjan was really great. It wasn’t a festival, in our time, five or six women used to get together and spin out spinning wheel. Bandana: How did the women in the village know Trinjan was going to take place? Gurdeep: Basically before Trinjan was going to happen, one girl would call the other girls that lived nearby. In someone’s house they would put on the charkhas (spinning wheels) and they would start spinning. Just like there are about ten or fifteen homes nearby, the women used to say that we’ll sit down here and spin. Otherwise normally the girls used to get together, about six or seven girls. They used to spin all night. When it was morning time, they would put their charkhas (spinning wheels) away. Gurdeep: Then around at three or two o’clock their mothers send over something to eat. Bandana: What did they used to eat in Trinjan? Gurdeep: At that time, the food was sevia (vermicelli) or kheer (rice pudding), just like this that we would eat at night. Agiavanti: In the nighttime, we used to prepare food and sit together. We used to sit together at night and eat makki (corn), chole (chickpeas), sevia (vermicelli), parshad (dough based sweetdish).

The descriptions provide by Gurdeep and Agiavanti suggest that the biodiversity of the surroundings was reflected in the folk gathering spaces; the cotton women spun, and the vermicelli, rice pudding, corn, chickpeas, and sweets they ate together were part of the agrarian landscape that women were physically embedded in. Today with the decline of Trinjan, women rarely gather together to spin cotton as they used to, according to the women I interviewed. Though some of the foods are still eaten, such as sevia (vermicelli) and kheer (rice pudding), they are no longer tied to Trinjan, while others are rarely prepared the same way.

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Theeyan The other folk tradition that women spoke of was Theeyan, the monsoon season festival that included peeng chutna (swinging from the village tree), boliyan (Punjabi folk songs), and also giddha (Punjabi folk dance) that would take place when women would return to their parents’ villages. Though Theeyan is still done in some villages in Punjab, it had come to an end in Chaina village in Faridkot District, while in Bhotna village in Barnala District, Theeyan is still held. When I spoke to Harsharan Kaur an elderly woman in her sixties from Faridkot District, she described to me what Theeyan was like in her childhood:

Harsharan: It used to be like this earlier. When sawan da mahina (monsoon season) came, women would go to from their inlaws’ home to their parents’ home. When this time would come, you know what we did? All the unmarried women, we’d finish up our work, and put on beautiful gold colored leere (jewelry). The married women used to put on make up. Now you don’t really notice a difference between married and unmarried women! At that time there was a difference. But we’d put tie our swings on a large pipal (ficus religiosa) tree. The women would swing on the swings together from the tree, and then many more would come and sings songs.

Similarly, Surjit Kaur, an energetic and joyful woman of age seventy offered a very clear description of Theeyan in her childhood, recalling that women numbering one hundred coming together and celebrating:

Surjit: Yes they used to put on Theeyan earlier. Now the Theeyan have ended, yes, Theeyan have ended. Earlier about a hundred women used to get together in the village after coming from this inlaws’ home. These days no one comes and no one calls any one other. Theeyan has slowed down quite a bit. Now no one comes over, no one goes to another house. Earlier Theeyan was a very big event. The women used to dress so nicely on that day. We would gather together and tie a swing to the tree and dance giddha (folk dance). The whole world would come. The girls used to come all over to dance quite a bit. I have danced so much in my lifetime. Bandana: Do you also dance these days as well? Surjit: Yes, I also dance these days a lot! But now I have gotten old. Bandana: It seems to me that these days you dance quite a bit. That’s why your health is so good, because you dance so much. Surjit: Yes, yes Bandana: So earlier in your village during Theeyan all the women used to get together and dance? Surjit: Yes, yes, we used to swings on the trees, and dance giddha (folk dance) and sing boliyan (folk songs) as well. Bandana: For how many hours did Theeyan last? Surjit: We used to leave around 3 in the afternoon used to come back around 6 in the evening. Our mothers used to prepare rotis (flatbread) for us to eat, and we would eat these coming home.

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Malwinder Kaur also described some of the foods that they used to serve during Theeyan, reflecting on the agricultural biodiversity of Punjab. Malwinder Kaur remembers the diversity of food that would be made for daughters as a sign of welcoming and love for their child.

Bandana: What was there to eat in Theeyan? Malwinder: People would prepare things like rotiyan (flatbreads), pure (flatbreads), kheer (rice pudding), and during the something sawan da mahina (monsoon season) they would prepare gulgule (fried sweets). The girls would come home and they would say, we should make some good food for our daughter because she would go soon. When the girls used to go from her husband’s parents’ village to her native village, her mother-in-law would give her sevia (sweet dish) to take along with her. Then the inlaws would make sevia together. Theeyan used to work together like this. Bandana: So during Theeyan there used to be food and women also used to sing songs? Malwinder: Yes, they used to sing songs. People used to sing so many songs.

Malwinder Kaur vividly described the relationship between Punjabi women’s folk heritage and the traditional foods in Punjab, illuminating the connection between the materiality of agrobiodiversity and its relationship with Punjabi women’s folk heritage. Though Punjabi women’s folk tradition is still celebrated in Punjab today, women described the celebrations as being disengaged from the agricultural heritage of Punjab.

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Chapter 3: WOMEN ACTION FOR ECOLOGY

Since 2008, Women Action for Ecology has been working with women in rural Punjab to revive women’s folk spaces to preserve agricultural biodiversity. Specifically, Women Action for Ecology has concentrated on the two folk traditions Trinjan and Theeyan to create a space for women to conserve agrobiodiversity in Punjab and cultivate foods through home gardens. Between the years 2008-2011, Women Action for Ecology held thirteen folk festivals across villages and cities in Punjab, mostly in the southern region below the Sutlej River known as Malwa, though extending to other regions in northern Punjab.

The events included three pilot folk festivals across villages, including festivals each in the following three villages: Chaina village, Faridkot District; Bhotna village, Barnala District; and Jeeda Village, Bhatinda District; Two large festivals in the large cities of Amritsar and Chandigarh; followed by eight additional food festivals in the following villages: Bullowal Village, Hoshiarpur District; Bahawalpur Village, Patiala District; Sangrur, Sangrur District; Batala village, Gurdaspur District; and Jalaldiwal Village, in Ludhiana District; and Bhullaran Village, Malerkotla District; Mazi Village, Sangrur District, and Mehatpur Village, Jalandhar District. Women Action for Ecology’s work to revive agrobiodiversity and traditional foods involved first, a research component to document and publish the activities of women’s knowledge of agrobiodiversity throughout Punjab; second Trinjan and Theeyan festivals in villages and urban areas; and third, regular village level meetings in order to ensure that information related to pesticides, health and food was carefully disseminated to women in village level meetings.

3.1 TRINJAN AND THEEYAN Recreating Folk Space During Trinjan and Theyean festivals, women gathered in open space near the village center, which they regularly gathered every morning to attend Gurdwara (Sikh temple)11. Elder women sung boliyan or verses from songs traditionally sung during Trinjan and Theeyan. Charkha or spinning wheel competitions were held for elder women to highlight the value of Punjabi traditions of self-sufficiency and appreciate traditions of older generations. Giddha or the Punjabi women’s folk dance was performed by younger women, with verses that reenacted scenes from the village. In both village and urban festivals, arrangements were made for women to showcase their talents on a central stage, the                                                                                                                11  Sikh temples or gurdwaras form a centerpiece village life in many Punjabi villages today. Families usually begin their day at the gurdwara and share information with each other in this space.

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difference being that the village festivals were a small number of women. When I spoke to Harbans Kaur a woman of over seventy years in Barnala district, she spoke of her experience participating in the spinning wheel competition in Amritsar City:

Bandana: I was told that you had gone to the Trinjan festival that took place in Amritsar. Harbans: Yes. First I thought, how can I go? Then Amarjeet Kaur (village coordinator) said to me, you should also go! So the three women from our family went together to Amritsar on the bus. I came in second in the charkha (spinning wheel) competition. It used to be like this in the village, like how it was in Amritsar. Before all the women used to get together. Now we don’t get together. Bandana: Yes I see that you have made many things with your own hands: Harbans: Then this spinning and stitching, with that we make blankets and everything else like cots. You can see them here, standing, all the cots, I made with my own hands. You can see these chairs that we have here, the ones with petia (boxes). I do most of the spinning in the house, since many of them say that they have a lot of work. You can probably see my photo in Amritsar. I still spin about half a kilogram of cotton a day!

Women like Harbans Kaur who attended the Trinjan festival in Amritsar reported that the environment was similar to the Trinjan festivals that she recalled in the past. Though when I asked Harbans Kaur if she attended the festivals that take place in the village, she did attend, though she did not always understand what was happening in these festivals, though she enjoyed seeing the women together. Traditional Foods Women Action for Ecology initiated a documentation component to ensure the women’s knowledge of traditional foods and healing practices could be showcased during the festivals. In order to do this, coordinators associated with Women Action for Ecology visited houses in the five different geographical regions of Punjab. The documentation process included walking tours with women in villages to identify uncultivated greens that had both nutritious and medicinal value according to the elder women. According to Women Action for Ecology, during this stage, roughly one hundred and fifty varieties of vegetables, pulses, grains and millets were collected to showcase the diversity that existed in Punjab prior to the Green Revolution. At the end of the documentation phase, two booklets were prepared Bebe Di Rasoi and Gian Di Potli, a compilation on the different medicines and foods that existed in Punjab.

Bandana: So last year you had gone to Amritsar? Agia Vanti and Minder: Yes we both went to Amritsar; we also went to Chandigarh. Minder: We had gone to Amritsar and then we had gone to Chandigarh. We even made this there. You had met us in Amritsar right? Bandana: Yes. Minder: Then we went to Chandigarh and made these foods there. Agia Vanti: These days in sawan (monsoon season) we don’t have much. Malpure (sweetdish), kheer (rice pudding), matti (savory snack), many different types of food; these days people make much less of this stuff.

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Minder: They also made makki de dalia (corn porridge), kichdi (porridge), gulgule (sweetdish), we made many things, mattiya (savory snack) out of bajra (millet). Bandana: How did you like the Trinjan that took place in Amritsar? Minder: It was very good. We made bhoot pinne (round sweets) out of jowar (sorghum), bajra (millet), and kanak (wheat). We also made one pinniya (round sweets) out of chowla (legumes) and til (sesame seeds). We prepared and ate them in Amritsar as well as in Chandigarh. We gave out the food to everyone. Bandana: The people who were around you, did they talk to you about the food? Minder: We told them how we made it, how we did it. Many people came and asked us how we did it. The Chief Minister of Punjab, Badal came and other people came as well. We met him later on. We were making rotis (flatbreads) from makki (corn) and bajra (millet), and later on we came to know that he was nearby. He spoke with us for some time and then went. Bandana: Do you feel that the way men think about these issues is changing? Minder: It seemed as if they finally are eating village food again, because in the cities they don’t make this type of food. Agia Vanti: No one makes it in the cities right? They were very, very happy eating the village food. Minder: Many people even came at night to show their families. They took the food home to their families for their kids. Bandana: Do you feel like festivals like the one that took place in Chandigarh should happen? That we should tell people what the traditional foods in Punjab are? Agia Vanti: People understand, this is what they want, that this is the work we should be doing.

The two women described how they were able to make different indigenous foods that were no longer cultivated in the cities, though after this meeting, they were able to influence some of the individuals living in urban areas about the importance of traditional foods. Seed Exhibitions During the Trinjan festival that took place in the city of Amritsar, roughly one hundred and fifty varieties of seeds, grains, and herbs were showcased to Punjabi women through a seed exhibition. These included seeds from throughout South Asia, as well as seeds from Punjab. According to Women Action for Ecology staff, women from rural areas could barely identify some of the wheat varieties that were exhibited in the stalls. The seed exhibitions were intended to remind women of the agricultural biodiversity that existed in Punjab before the introduction of high yield varieties. During my first visit to Punjab, I went on a walking tour with Daljeet, an elder village women of age seventy three from Faridkot District, and Gagan, a staff member from Women Action for Ecology, who began pointing our the various greens that grew wild around her fields:

Bandana: So you use some of these plants that grow wild here? Daljeet: Yes, we use some of these today. I can even prepare something for you! Bandana: That is very kind of you. I would love to hear about some of the plants that you use that grow here.

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Daljeet: Yes, see these growing here, these leaves here are bathu (chenopodium album), which we mix with saron da saag (mustard greens) or put them in kaddi (curry) or in parantha (savory flatbread). This other one is akk (calatropis procera), which is good for earaches. Bandana: Yes actually bathu I have heard of. You make saag (cooked leafy greens) with it? Daljeet: Yes we have it quite often. It’s quite tasty. Bandana: It would be nice to taste. Daljeet: Then this is marua (thai basil), which is a type of leaf, then we also have ratanjot (alkanet root) growing here which we can use for pain in the ear. Gagan: Bandana, see how the children are following their grandmother? This is how children used to learn about the environment before. Bandana: Yes, she’s a good teacher.

During my time in Punjab, it was usually the eldest women who possessed the most knowledge about wild and local plants, though there was little incentive for preserving these plants, or in encouraging women to recognize that this knowledge was valuable. Hence the seed exhibitions were intended to remind women that their knowledge was central to the preservation of agrobiodiversity and nutritional security. Informational Meetings

To supplement the folk festivals, informational meetings were held monthly on the topics of pesticides and fertilizers and human health, and how to keep home gardens through natural farming techniques. Meetings were coordinated through the Women Action for Ecology team. I interviewed Gurpreet Singh, a male coordinator who helped with Women Action for Ecology on the use of natural farming:

Bandana: So you help with the meetings? Gurpreet: Yes I have helped with some of them. Bandana: What do you speak about at the meetings? Gurpreet: I have helped with sharing natural farming with women, so they can begin this in their home gardens.

Bandana: Could you describe what you share with them? Gurpreet: I tell them to first plough their land, and add natural fertilizers to the land, made of goha (cowdung), level the land, water it and let it sit for a few days. After some time, they can sow the seeds. During this time they should prepare the jeevamrit mixture which is made of jaggary (cane sugar), besan (chickpea flower), goha (cowdung), and cow urine and water and let it sit for a few days. When it is ready, they should spray this mixture on the crops with waters, and as soon as the plants grow fruits or flowers, they can stop. Bandana: These are the techniques that the male farmers use right? Gurpreet: These are the techniques that we are sharing. Another thing is to use old buttermilk that has been sitting for a week, and this will protect the crop from ants or worms.

The meetings were intended to encourage women to think about the food that they were feeding their families. Since women were the main decision-makers on what foods the family consumed, the health of

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the family was in their hands. When Women Action for Ecology organized meetings on human health, they shared materials from groups such as Pesticide Action Network, to talk about the impact of pesticides on the human body. As one of the main women organizers, Gagandeep Kaur said: Bandana: What do you talk about at the meetings?

Gagandeep: I usually explain the connection between pesticides, heavy metals, and other chemicals in the soil and the environmental health damage that is taking place across Punjab. Before we began the meetings we had a dialogue on environmental health in the city of Ludhiana where we invited doctors, veterinarians, scientists, researchers and NGO leaders to discuss the current scenario in Punjab. From this meeting, we collected the necessary studies that detail the impact these chemicals can have on human health.

Bandana: I see, and you discuss this information during the meetings? Gagandeep: We discuss relevant information for the farming community. We are seeing illnesses in Punjab that range from cancer, to reproductive problems in the male and female population, to neurological disorders and retardation. I try to explain to the women what the researchers are saying about the illnesses, and the need for women active and reducing these illnesses by eating and preparing safe, nutritional foods.

Gagandeep also showed me some of the materials that she used, ranging from charts to Punjabi translations of literature used by organizations that work with farmers in South Asia. She mentioned that once in a while they would bring a doctor or community medicine practitioner to talk about preserving health, though the most important thing was to motivate women to take their health into their own hands. 3.2 CHANGES AND IMPACT Social Cohesion Women described that the Trinjan and Theeyan festivals offered them a space to gather together, to learn and interact with one another, and to inherit traditions from elder women. Women also mentioned that they were able to contextualize the knowledge the received through and with each other, through the informational meetings offered by staff members of Women Action for Ecology. While the folk spaces helped facilitate social cohesion in a spirit of celebration, the informational meetings offered a strong educational component, on the traditional foods and the benefits of eating a diet based on Punjab’s native agrobiodiversity, with cereals such as millet, corn, sorghum, and other grains, in addition to information on the connection between pesticides and fertilizers and diseases in Punjab such as cancer, arthritis, hormonal imbalances, and reproductive health disorders. After attending several of the village level meetings in late July, I visited the house of Kamaljeet Kaur, in Barnala District, a thirty five year old woman who moved back to Punjab after living with her late husband in the state of Maharastra, a region that is populated by many Sikhs from Punjab due to the historic connections of the city Hazur Sahib. Since Kamaljeet moved back to Punjab, she mentioned that

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she doesn’t leave the village often, nor visit the farm, nor does she know that much about farming. Kamaljeet spoke to me about the importance of the meetings for someone like her:

Kamaljeet: Before when they were talking about kudrati kheti (natural farming), I thought it was a joke. How could they farm without pesticides and fertilizers? I didn’t have that much knowledge about this. I didn’t even know how they farmed. When Gagan12 came from Ludhiana, she was talking about the connection between pesticides and fertilizers and the illnesses in Punjab I gained a lot of knowledge in this area. Then I really gained an interest. But before this I really didn’t know what natural farming was.

Women like Kamaljeet Kaur saw the new folk spaces and the meetings as places where they could receive information that remained inaccessible to them otherwise, especially on the connection between chemical pesticides and fertilizers and human health. Women mentioned that though newspapers reported on the relationship between chemical inputs and human health, there was a dearth of useful information to the farming community on how to prevent and treat illnesses, and there were few avenues where the farming community could access credible information, in a language that was clear to them. These women often referred to the meetings as a place where they receive gian (knowledge).

Other women like Navdeep Kaur, a shyer, younger woman of age twenty-five was observant of the distant relationships in the village, though she admitted that she did not leave home often to go to the village meetings. Though Navdeep engaged more with others while in college, but once college ended she mentioned that she did not have a reason to visit the other homes in the village. When I asked her about the value of the folk festival Trinjan that took place in her village, she reflected on how Trinjan festival helped women like her come out from their homes and speak to one another:

Bandana: If Trinjan were to take place again. Do you think it will make a difference in the village? Navdeep: Yes, when Trinjan were to take place then each person go again and each person receives that knowledge, the would come to know, and they would go again and again. Bandana: Do you think that your age women are able to go out of the home if Trinjan were to take place again? Navdeep: If we sit together then yes. We live in separate homes so if we had time to sit with each other then yes it would make a difference. Bandana: Do girls your age meet often? Navdeep: If we go out somewhere then during those times we meet one another. But in general people go to each others’ house less. The relationships have become more distant. Bandana: But with Trinjan then you think that people would be closer to one another? Navdeep: Yes it does make a difference.

Though Navdeep did not leave her home often, she described being interested in the work that Women Action for Ecology was conducting in her village. She echoed the sentiments of younger women in the village, who admitted that, unless women had a real reason to visit the other homes in the village women

                                                                                                               12 A Women Action for Ecology staff member

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no longer visited one another. With the new folk spaces, not only could women come together instead of staying isolated in their homes, younger women could come inherit knowledge from the elder women in the process. From her perspective, as long as the work continued to move forward in the village, women would begin reviving traditional foods on their own. Traditional Foods Though the Trinjan and Theeyan festivals helped spread knowledge on the importance of millet, sorghum, corn, and lesser grains like amaranth and barley, women admitted that integrating these foods into their household diets proved to be a challenge. Though some women consumed traditional foods in their homes regularly, other women admitted that their children had not developed a taste for these foods, and therefor, it was difficult for women to feed them to their families. Jeevan Kaur the mother of a son and a daughter in Barnala District echoed the sentiments of other women when she described that her children did not enjoy the taste of traditional grains like millet: Bandana: Did you attend the festivals for traditional foods?

Jeevan: Yes we did go. I made sharbat (fruit drink) on that day. Bandana: What traditional foods to you eat at home. Just like they mentioned at the festival, bhoot pinne (sweetdish), chibbran di chutney (a sauce). Out of these foods which do you make at home? Jeevan: We make chibbran di chutney (a sauce), after putting haria mirch (green pepper), lal mirch (red pepper), chibbar (a fruit); dalia (oats). In winter we make bajra di roti (millet flatbread), kichdi (porridge), chowla diya pinniya (sweetdish), after putting kali mirch (black pepper) and ajwaan (carom seeds).

Bandana: Do you feel that traditional foods in the home? Jeevan: They are great, but these days, the children don’t eat it. Bandana: When you make it, what do the children say? Jeevan: They just don’t eat it. Many women mentioned that the children didn’t eat food because they acquired a taste for other foods, said it was too difficult to digest. Because the use of native varieties would mean abandoning popular grains like wheat, women found it difficult to revive these foods in their homes, outside of the folk festivals where the whole village would prepare and eat food together. Navdeep Kaur was a younger woman of age twenty-six from Faridkot District who described that she regularly prepared traditional foods in her house. She used the common Punjabi word shawnk (interest) when describing her fascination for the cultural heritage of Punjab, and because of this, she ate traditional food quite regularly. Women like Navdeep who possessed a strong interest in cultural preservation tended to prepare them often in their homes:

Bandana: Your mom was saying that in this home you cook a lot of traditional foods. Navdeep: I also make traditional foods. Bandana: What do you make? Navdeep: I make pakore (chickpea based savory snack), kheer (rice pudding). I make these types of foods.

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Bandana: Do you also get bajra (millet) these days here? Navdeep: We get in the winter. It’s less common in Punjab, but otherwise in Rajasthan it’s quite common to find. Because of the climate it’s less common in Punjab, because of this Rajasthan has bajra (millet) and makki (corn). Saron de saag (cooked mustard greens) and makki di roti (corn flatbread) is very good, right? Bandana: Yes, makki di roti is very tasty. So here you also cook bajra di roti (millet flatbread)? Navdeep: Yes we do. Bandana: And when we went to Amritsar, people also enjoyed things like gond katire (tragacanth gum). Navdeep: Yes we also have it in our house. Bandana: You also make it here? Navdeep: Yes we eat it. We eat is every morning these days. It’s nice and cold in the summertime; we put it in milk. Bandana: So you think its tasty? Navdeep: Very much so, that’s why we have it every day. Bandana: And you enjoy making these foods? Navdeep: Yes makki di roti (corn flatbread), bajra di roti (millet flatbread), gond katheere (tragacanth gum), pakore (chickpea based savory snack), kheer (rice pudding).

In other cases when women mentioned that they prepared traditional foods, their perception composed of some of the residual traditional foods of Punjab, though they did not mention some of the native varieties of cereals or other crops in their food. Raman Kaur spoke of eating the popular food kheer (rice pudding) in her home, which is still very common to eat during the rainy season:

Bandana: When Trinjan happened, afterwards did you make traditional foods in your home? Raman: We used to make it at home anyways. Yes just like now how sawan da mahina (monsoon season) is happening and just like how we made pakore (friend snack) and we made pure (flatbreads) and kheer (rice pudding). Raman: We make all of this at home during sawan (rainy month). Raman: Our kids eat them, so its natural that we would be making them in our home. Sometimes there are mattia (fried snack), or gulgule (sweet dish), or when it’s raining, our kids feel like having these things, so we make them. Otherwise the common tradition of our villages is to eat kheer (rice pudding) during sawan da mahina (monsoon season). They understand this very well. But during the month of sawan in each village there is kheer. There are very few homes in which they don’t make kheer in sawan.

Generally women spoke of an interest in traditional foods, though it was clear that elder Punjabi women were the bearers of this knowledge. The new folk spaces allowed younger women to learn and identify traditional foods, though women differed in both their ability/inclination to prepare these foods at home and also in their understanding of what was meant by traditional food. Home Gardens

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A number of the women I interviewed have also begun reviving home gardens using the natural pesticides and fertilizers that they learned at Women Action for Ecology campaign. Women often admitted that their ability to start a garden of fruits and vegetables for household consumption depended on the availability of kachi than (open space) near their home and also water of good quality, and also adequate temperature conditions. Gurdeep Kaur described that she has begun planting vegetables with natural pesticides and fertilizers in her home, as well as the farm and began saving the seeds. She described the variety of vegetables that she plants and also the amount that she usually is able to receive from the garden for household consumption:

Bandana: Which subjis do you plant in your house? Gurdeep: Palak (spinach), methe, methi (fenugreek), gajar (carrots), mooli (turnip), salgam (radish), shakarkandi (sweet potato), lasan (garlic) Gurdeep: We either get the seeds from the city or from Gora (village coordinator). Gurdeep: I have a two year old son here, named Rinku. He used to have health problems because of the fertilizers and he goes to Faridkot (city) for help. Gurdeep: He has problems for two or three years because of the fertilizers. Now we plant the in the fields as well. Bandana: Do you have these vegetables every day? Bandana: Yes, most days I got to the garden to break them off. Other times we get them from the bazaar when we aren’t able to get them from the home garden. Our palak (spinach) just grows so fresh and tasty, the kids enjoy it. Bandana: What do you get from the store usually? Gurdeep: We usually get masur (red lentils) or moongi (mung beans). We even get vegetables sometimes. Sometimes alu (potatoes), bangan (eggplant), or kadu (squash), whenever we need to prepare it. Bandana: Do you feel like you get enough food for your family? Gurdeep: Yes, it seems like we get a good amount of food for the family. Some days we do not. Bandana: Do you feel like there is a difference in the taste? Gurdeep: Yes, I do feel like there is a difference in the taste because we don’t put the pesticides and fertilizers. Now we have so many subjis; it’s been three months since we have gotten vegetables from anyone else. Bandana: Do you ever prepare the seeds in your house? Gurdeep: Yes we keep the seeds in our house; they are with our father in law. He keeps them in a room. Moolia (turnip), chhole (chickpea), pindia (okra). Bandana: So you get the seeds from your father in law. Then you keep them in your home? Gurdeep: Yes, we keep them in our home. Bandana: Then how do you keep them? Gurdeep: We put them in bottles in our home. Bandana: Do you eat these vegetables every day? Gurdeep: Yes we cook these vegetables twice in the day for our meals.

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In addition to women who recently began cultivating fruits and vegetables with natural fertilizers and

pesticides, a number of women from the elder generation, like Hazara Kaur of age seventy three

emphasized that they had been planting these vegetables even before and described how their knowledge

was reinforced through the Women Action for Ecology work:

Bandana: So you eat vegetables from the garden each day? Hazara: Yes we eat vegetables from the garden each day. Bandana: Do you also get vegetables from the farm? Hazara: No just from our home. We eat vegetables without pesticides and fertilizers every day. Bandana: When did you begin planting vegetables at home? Hazara: It’s been about thirty years. Since I married Jaswinder I started planting vegetables at home. I don’t put pesticides or fertilizers. Bandana: Really it has been thirty years? Hazara: Yes it has been thirty years. From the time I moved here I started planting vegetables at home. Bandana: Then how did you learn how to start planting the vegetables? Hazara: I thought, I really have the desire to plant vegetables in our home. We have such a wonderful wide, open space for vegetables here. When I had free time, I thought I could really do something with it. So I started planting vegetables here and there. Then I started to put water here and then I really felt like putting vegetables in our house, that I should keep planting vegetables at home. When the kadhu (squash) and thoria (squash) are done then I will plant mooli (turnip), gajara (carrots), the vegetables that you plant in sial (winter). Bandana: Then you plant the vegetables without fertilizers and pesticides? Hazara: Yes whenever I come across a sundi (pest) then I remove it. Then they ripen by themselves. Bandana: Do you also put khad (fertilizer)? Hazara: No we don’t put khad. We put goha (cowdung) Bandana: Then they turn out okay with goha? Hazara: Yes they turn out quite tasty.

She walked me through her garden, which had a variety of fruits and vegetables, (try to name some of these) along with a small butterfly, while her granddaughter yelled, ‘titli! titli!, calling out to the to the first butterfly I saw during my time in Punjab. Health Benefits Punjabi women also spoke on the changes they noticed in their health with the increased cultivation vegetables in home gardens without the use of chemical inputs. Gurdeep Kaur, a middle aged woman of roughly forty eight years in Faridkot District, spoke about the weakness she felt in her body, a common ailment described Punjabi men and women, old and young, often attributed to the urea in the fertilizers and food they consume:

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Bandana: Do you feel like there has been a difference in your health? Gurdeep: Yes I do feel like there has been a difference in my health, I don’t have as many joint pains as before. Now if we break new ones then this same work will be there. She said if we plant more then we will have more work to do. Bandana: Did you have any health problems earlier? Gurdeep: Yes I do have pains and I do feel weakness in my body Bandana: Before you had these problems? Gurdeep: Yes they used to hurt a lot. So we use a lot of mustard oil to make them feel better. Bandana: Has it gotten better with mustard oil? Gurdeep: Yes, it has gotten better with mustard oil. Bandana: Did the pain go away with the mustard oil or by planting vegetables without pesticides and fertilizers? Gurdeep: With both. With both of these the pains have gone down less.

Gurdeep Kaur further commented on the fact that many people in Punjab who are illiterate don’t understand the impact of the pesticides and fertilizers. She mentioned that people are now beginning to understand the impact, because doctors are beginning to tell people about the reasons behind their illnesses.

Gurdeep: Yes, yes, many people don’t understand these issues; the people who are illiterate, they don’t know what is happening. Bandana: Because in Punjab there are many illnesses happening, and people don’t know that it is related to pesticides. Gurdeep: Now people are beginning to understand a little more. Earlier they did not know. There are many people whose knees hurt, sometimes their shoulder joints. Now people are starting to understand what is going on. Bandana: How do people come to know? Gurdeep: How? These days the doctors are telling us these things. After they do the tests they tell us about urea, they we start to understand. That’s why its people are putting water filters in their homes.

Similarly, Malkit Kaur an elderly woman from Faridkot District also spoke about of how she did not have the same health problems as other women in her house. Malkit Kaur was a towering, strong woman in her sixties who actually served as my guide through the village for a day.

Bandana: Do you feel planting vegetables at home is worthwhile work? Malkit: Yes I believe it’s very worthwhile to give your family such wonderful vegetables. I am about sixty years old and don’t have any physical pains like many other people in the village. Bandana: Did your parents also used to plant vegetables like this? Malkit: They used to plant vegetables but I didn’t do it at home. At that time we didn’t have fertilizers and pesticides like this. At that time who used pesticides? Bandana: Do you think the work that is happening in the villages through Women Action for Ecology is this good work?

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Malkit: Yes it’s good. It’s better than sitting around idle. Even if you can work for two hours it’s good to do it because that way you remain in good health.

Malkit Kaur was one of the few women I interviewed who spoke about the health benefits of physical activity. With the mechanization of agriculture, it has been suggested that the farming community in Punjab has loss the habit of engaging in strong physical activities. In fact, it was usually the elder women like who tended to have the most strong and sturdy bodies.

Enjoyment and Connection to Nature When I spoke to Gian Kaur, she talked to me about the sense of peace she had from keeping a home garden, and being able to visit the garden regularly.

Bandana: Did you also go to the meeting when they were discussing these things? Gian: Yes, I did go. Bandana: Did you start planting the vegetables afterwards? Gian: No we planted them before. Bandana: Do you think women have started to plant more vegetables for their homes now? Gian: Yes, they have. Gian: Otherwise the vegetables that we plant in our house, there is not much of a need for pesticides and fertilizers. Because our natural fertilizers, they dung from the livestock there is enough. They grow with the natural fertilizers; you do not need to use the fertilizers that come from the bazaar. Bandana: Then you prepare these in your home yourself, the cowdung fertilizer? Gian: Yes in the home. Bandana: And you feel that these vegetables turn out very tasty? Gian: Yes Bandana: Did you every have any problems with these vegetables? Gian: No, never. Bandana: Is the work hard or easy? Gian: It’s easy this work! Along with this we can enjoy planting vegetables. When I walk around the garden, I feel very happy seeing the vegetables. They put the mind at peace. I also have the habit that every time I go there I take a look at the vegetables before I return.

Similarly, Charanjit Kaur spoke of her sense of affection not to just the garden that was kept in her home, but to the farm that she still visited on a daily basis. Her husband, Amarjeet Singh, was a small farmer, and one of the most respected farmers in the village, because of his dedication to natural farming. Amarjeet kept an extensive seed bank in his house of indigenous varieties, and would offer the seeds to farmers who wanted to start natural faming. Charanjit Kaur was also committed to subsistence living; though she did not plant a garden at home, she used to visit the farm regularly to pick vegetables. Charanjit Kaur was quite rare, in that few women actually described their affection for the land and the farm as much as she did.

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Charanjit: I still go to the fields today. Bandana: Really, what do you do? Charanjit: If I go then I will pick narma (cotton), or pick phalia (beans), or put some vegetables. Charanjit: If there’s a day that I don’t go to the farm, then something does not feel right. I ask myself, why didn’t I go to the farm? Why didn’t I go? It’s just like my husband, his mind is in the farm. He goes at 6 in the morning and returns at 8 at night. Bandana: Seems like he has a deep connection with his farm. Charanjit: Yes a lot of people feel that they can go to the farm for a minute and return, and not do any work with their hands. Amarjeet is dedicated to his farm.

Charnjit’s sense of joy in their family’s chosen lifestyle extended beyond the way they cultivated their crops and her frequent visits to the fields. Charanjit expressed a very distinct and dignified joy in being self-sufficient in a number of the tasks that she did for her home, so much so that her enjoyment of nature and tradition stood out among all the rural women I interviewed. These included teaching her son and daughter how to spin cotton on the charkha, making soap from nearby plants such as rind and making clothes from the cotton she picked—all amidst of a heavy emphasis on mechanization. I noticed throughout by time in Punjab women like Charanjit Kaur exhibited a unique sense of pride in showing me the items that she and the other family members did through their own hard physical work, saying something was hathi or made by hand. 3.3 BARRIERS TO PARTICIPATION Heavy Workload The women I interviewed also spoke of their heavy workload, which often prevented them from participating in the activities in the village. Most of these women were the nu (daughter-in-laws) of their families, which often meant that they had considerable household responsibilities. When I interviewed twenty two year old Amandeep Kaur, she spoke to me about how her saura (father-in-law’s) death affected the family’s workload. Amandeep’s husband, who was only twenty-three tended the one and a half acres of land on his own while she managed most of the household chores. Amandeep mentioned that because of the workload it was difficult for her to leave home to attend the meetings. Her mother, Jasbir, interviewed here as well, would regularly attend the meetings, and share the information with her daughter in law:

Bandana: And you have also heard, that this food without pesticides and fertilizers, it’s good? Meaning you listen quite often? Amandeep: Yes I listen. Jasbir: I come home and I tell her things. I often bring the books back from the meetings. Bandana: And you share them with your daughter? Jasbir: Yes, she listens. Amandeep: I learn about natural farming my mother tells me about it, and my husband has started farming without fertilizers and pesticides. I have the books that she shares with me.

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Bandana: Essentially, you sit and you read what is there in these books? Amandeep: Yes the booklets explain the importance of traditional foods. Bandana: Yes, like in the booklet that they gave during the festival in Amritsar Bebe di Rasoi. Amandeep: What did you learn? Amandeep: We learn about gulgule (sweets), saag (cooked greens), makki di roti (corn based roti), bajra di roti (millet based flatbread), bhoot pinne (sweets), these are the foods we make in our homes now and my husband now does natural farming.

Though Amandeep could not attend the meetings, her mother Jasbir strongly believed in the importance of sharing the information with the rest of the family, and would regularly pass on the materials to her daughter in law Amandeep. The flow of communication between the family members allowed the Amandeep and her husband to farm without pesticides and fertilizers without physically attending the meetings.

Similarly, Sukhjit Kaur was a middle aged woman who often observed her mother-in-law working in the vegetable garden, though she had never been able to attend the meetings, or work in the garden due to the heavy workload that she had in her house. When I asked Sukhjit about whether or not she plants vegetables, she expressed great interest in learning how to garden; however, with her household chores it was quite difficult for her to set aside time for this. When we were together, Sukhjit described the different household tasks, including cooking, attending the livestock, and cleaning up often prevented her from being able to participate in cultivation and other activities:

Bandana: Do you also plant vegetables here? Sukhjit: No I don’t ever really plant them here; I just see them being planted. Our housework doesn’t finish. If so then I would plant vegetables and learn about planting a little bit. But the housework doesn’t finish. Do this, do that. Bandana: What work do you do in the house? Sukhjit: Wash the clothes, prepare the vegetables, make cowdung cakes, give the animals water, wash the pots and pans, clean the livestock area, knead the dough, cook roti and dhal, all of this—this is the work I do in the house. Bandana: Is there a difference in the way they cook? Sukhjit: You can’t tell so much. To me they are just as tasty, but these vegetables cook much faster. The squash opens up very quickly; there are some that take longer to open up. [Daughter in background: You will never find vegetables as tasty as these!] Sukhjit: Yes there is a difference in the vegetables grown at home. Bandana: Does it seem to you that when you are elder you want to keep vegetables in the house too like this? Sukhjit: If we get the opportunity to keep a vegetable at home then I will keep them at home. But if we have to keep doing housework then where we keep the vegetables? I really wish to keep them. I really have an interest to follow along now and plant vegetables. But if work does not finish until twelve or one ‘o clock in the afternoon, then it gets difficult. By then I get very tired and for an hour I rest. Bandana: If you had time then you would?

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Sukhjit Yes if I finished making roti (flatbreads); then I would go ahead and learn. I would ask: how do you plant this vegetable, and this vegetable?

Both Amandeep and Sukhjit’s experience revealed the heavy responsibility placed on daughter in laws to perform household chores. Because the majority of villages in Punjab practice village exogamy, it is often difficult for women to leave their household work to attend village meetings or take on other responsibilities without the approval of their family members. In households where daughter-in-laws were encouraged to attend villages meetings by husbands or in-laws, women participated more actively in the folk festivals, group meetings, home gardens, and traditional food preparations. Where sufficient communication networks were formed to engage daughters-in-law, this also help facilitate women’s participation in agrobiodiversity conservation. Domestic Control Rajwinder Kaur, was a young woman of age twenty two who was born in Faridkot District, but studied in nearby Muktsar District to work as a certified nursing attendant in the capital city of Chandigarh. She spoke to me about the difficulty of young women’s participation because of the need to protect their izzat, a common concept in languages like Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, that is often translated as honor, and refers to a set of social norms that dictate behavior across the northern South Asia including the Indus and Ganges plains, across the modern day countries of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and the Punjab region. In an analysis of izzat in the Jat Sikh community, anthropologist Joyce Pettigrew defines conceptualizes Izzat as, “a complex of values; it is a philosophy of life that includes their paramount concerns with power, with reciprocity in giving, equality in vengeances, and non-submission to threat. A family’s izzat must be preserved at all costs, increased whenever possible, And …if the honor of a family’s women is lost, so also is the family’s public position” (Pettigrew 1975). According to Rajwinder, she understood the connection between pesticides and fertilizers, but did not feel that she as a young woman had the right to talk about issues of pesticides and human health in the villages, since this would imply that she is telling the other members of the village how to behave:

Rajwinder: You supposed there is one lecture. If you go study, you go to the college, in the hospitals. There is a point in doing things. The people in the villages will not listen to what a city girl is saying and we can say anything. In the home they don’t listen. An unmarried girl can’t do anything. A married girl is totally under her husband and, if she gives a lecture today, tomorrow she is going to get married. Do you know what the boys will point out? If she is lecturing the whole village, what will happen to me? My entire life will be spoiled because the boys would speak against me. Bandana: So you feel that, you can’t speak about these issues, because it might harm your reputation in the future? Rajwinder: Our entire life we have to exist in a marriage, and our whole life we don’t live in our parents’ village. Do you know what is with you your whole life? Your izzat. And do you know what izzat means? It means that a girl has to stay at home, has to study, has to have a good result.

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According to women like Rajwinder, when it would be time for her to marry, her izzat would play a considerable role. Her ability to stay at home and do well in her studies and her career weighed heavily in her izzat. ‘In negotiating marriage, each side carefully considers the izzat of the other family. The amount of dowry and material transactions, as well as the personal qualities of the prospective spouse. Each family ponders on how these ratings will affect their own standing and so will influence the prospects of any unmarried daughters or sons,’ says anthropologist David Mendalbaum. Closely tied to izzat is the concept of purdah. Purdah or “curtain’ refers to the specific traits of veiling and spatial separation, and more largely to the values about the proper behavior or women, to the restriction on their movement outside the household, and requirements for their respectful demeanor within the home” (Mendelbaum 1986, 1991). There is a strong relationship between izzat and purdah in the South Asian normative discourse; the more one holds on to their izzat, the stronger the social prescriptions around purdah tend to be. When I visited the home of Gurmeet Kaur, the wife of a large landowner in Barnala District. She described how issues of control were related to women being compelled to work at home, rather than attend seminars that might give offer them opportunities to engage in ecological work in the village. Gurmeet Kaur was able to attend two meetings before she was told to stay at home and work. She mentioned that she had attended two meetings, and then had to discontinue attending the meetings because her husband no longer wanted her to attend.

Gurmeet Kaur: We stay at home during the meetings. My husband says to me, ‘Why do you have to go to the meeting? Stay at home, do work.’ Bandana Kaur: So you didn’t go to Trinjan or Theeyan festivals when they were happening? He said you should do work at home? Gurmeet Kaur: Yes, do work at home, that’s what he says. First I get up and I make tea, and then however many members of the family there are, wherever they are sitting, I go and I give them tea. Then my sons go to school, I get them ready, then I go and milk the buffaloes and clean their pen. Then I come back from there and then I make tea for people. However many members of the family there are, I offer them tea. Okay? Then I sweep, mop, clean the bathrooms all on my own. After finishing this then I go to the kitchen and do more work. I prepare the vegetables, I make rotis (flatbreads), and then wherever family members are sitting then I offer them tea again. Then I clean up the pots and pans again, then around 10 in the evening I give them tea again then I wash the pots and pans again.

Over the course of the interview, a distinct sadness in Gurmeet’s voice began to emerge, after the initial show of hospitality. Her workload seemed to be quite heavy, and as we continued speaking, she suggested that her husband at time beat her when she did not perform the right duties. I thanked Gurmeet Kaur for sharing her words with us, but knew with a family of three sons, a daughter, and a husband who demanded much from her, questions of agrobiodiversity were beyond some of her immediate concerns.

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Education and Emigration One of the greatest challenges in involving the youngest generation in the Women’s Action for Ecology work was the strong emphasis on education for women in the region. In writing this, my attempt is not to project women’s education as an impediment to women’s empowerment, rather to uncover the way education has influenced the aspirations youth in Punjab, with a particular focus on women’s outmigration from villages either through marriage or the desire to abroad. Both of these scenarios tend to reflect how the political and economic environment of Punjab has placed a strain on opportunities for youth, often disengaging them from concerns affecting their village. Within Chaina and Bhotna village, many of the adolescent women emphasized that much of their time was directed towards education rather than the Women’s Action for Ecology work. Though some of the women observed that the culture and natural environment around them was changing dramatically, the environment, and human health in the region, their prime concern was to make sure that they continued their studies to secure a sense of stability, both economically and socially. As I continued on throughout many of the homes throughout Punjab, a number of younger women would tell me that they often did not have time to learn about agricultural biodiversity or traditional foods because they had to study, and this took up the majority of their time. In mid-July I visited the home of Pritam, the village sarpanchni13 (head) of Chaina village, or the female village head. The village coordinator walked me through the back veranda leading to their house, which a multilevel rural home that they had moved in to within recent years. I had first attended their home to speak to their youngest son, Angrez about his switch to natural farming, though he was somewhat disengaged during the course of our conversation. I decided to visit the home a second time, and speak to the four women in the family about the current circumstances around the decline of agriculture in Punjab as they relate to women. As I was speaking to Pritam Kaur along with her two daughters and daughter in law, they shared their thoughts on marriage and dowry in Punjab and how this related to an increased emphasis on women’s education.

Bandana: There is a huge emphasis on women’s education in Punjab, what do you think about this? Lakhwinder: For a woman her studies are necessary. If you don’t study, they you don’t get a good marriage. If she studies, it’s an expense in the beginning for the education fees, but if you try to get married without an education it’s more of an expense. Bandana: If a woman is literate then a marriage happens? Lakhwinder: If a man works, and a woman doesn’t have a job, then the marriage doesn’t happen. They usually want someone who has a job, so women have to study. Pritam: Yes, in Punjab, when we talk about the killing of baby girls, it’s not that we think that there shouldn’t be girls. The groom’s family ask for cash, these are the things that are saying that there shouldn’t be a girl. When the girls home goes to seek a match for her, some say give us 35

                                                                                                               13 Sarpanchni is the female head of the village, while the Sarpanch is the male head of the village.  

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lakh rupees, some say give us 40 lakh rupees, some say give this much. The people who we go to, the in laws, they are the ones who place more demands on a woman.

Pritam and her daughter-in-law Lakhwinder suggested that education has become almost a necessity for young women in Punjab in order for them to get married. Because of high dowry demands that are said to have increased during Green Revolution years, women in Punjab can often be conceived as an economic burden. Though women’s education can be a large expense for families, as Pritam and Lakhwinder suggested, dowry prices tend to be higher when one does not have educational qualifications. When I spoke to younger women from the village about these topics, they admitted that Punjab’s declining economy and the prospects of a better future outside of Punjab set women’s aspirations beyond the village itself. In fact this was one of the most common responses that I heard from youth in Punjab. When I spoke to Raman, a younger woman of age seventeen who was studying in a nearby school, she commented on the aspiration for youth to leave the region:

Bandana: Do you think women would like to stay in Punjab? Raman: You know what. New technologies are coming, and we’re also getting more international. I think a lot of people want to go to foreign countries. Now you don’t know how many people want to go foreign. They go abroad and they tell us what is happening and people have the desire to leave Punjab. Bandana: Do you think that a lot of children want to go foreign? Raman: Definitely. I think ninety nine percent of the youth want to go abroad. Bandana: What do they think they’ll have if they go abroad? Raman: The economy is much better, the jobs are much better, they can get more money abroad. There are no jobs here. You don’t earn much here, and there people will be able to earn more perhaps.

To go ‘foreign’ was a desire I would here often among the youth in Punjab, setting women’s aspirations in a place that was well beyond the village and the need to preserve agricultural biodiversity. Thus, the demand for women to be educated, at the exclusion of all other activities often meant that for groups like Women Action for Ecology a larger effort needed to be made to engage women of younger generations, who did not see agricultural biodiversity preservation as relevant to their marriage or economic aspirations, which were almost entirely located outside of the village environs. As another professor of geography, who wrote here thesis on the sustainability of the Green Revolution in Punjab told me, ‘Some of the energy will now have to come from youth in the Diaspora; many of the young people hear are focused on going abroad, and without the youth, the problems will not be solved. We need youth from the Diaspora to work together with the youth from Punjab.’

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Chapter 4: A NEW ECOLOGICAL DISCOURSE

The experience of women engaged in Women Action for Ecology campaign can contribute to a new ecological discourse for Punjab in the post-Green Revolution era, by calling into question the existing agricultural development paradigm in Punjab and its conceptualization. In particular, interviews, through the lived experience of pre- and post-Green Revolution Punjab, I aim to explore how interrelated and complex systems, such as women, agrobiodiversity, and folk heritage, are just as relevant for sustainability goals in a modern post-Green Revolution context as they have been historically, and can provide oft understudied, but critical, new directions for agricultural development models by balancing a long-standing focus on cash crops with women’s knowledge of agroecology and household nutritional security; input intensive systems with an understanding of the social and cultural role of women as farmers and cultivators; and an exclusive focus on science with an informed understanding of human-ecological-cultural systems and long-term sustainability. 4.1 CASH CROPS VS. AGROECOLOGICAL AND HOUSEHOLD NUTRITIONAL SECURITY One of the central concerns in Punjab today is the emphasis on cash crops at the exclusion of agroecological and household nutritional security. Since the Green Revolution period, and perhaps even before this, Punjab has seen a rise in the number of crops for the market, with especially with the production of rice, wheat, and American cotton. In Punjab, as a percentage of total crops, the area under rice cultivation has increased by from 4.79 percent to 33.37 percent in 2005, the area under wheat cultivation increased from 29.58 percent to 43.89 percent, and the area under American cotton has increased from 5.17 percent to 5.72 percent (Statistical Abstracts 2005). Though cash cropping can present competitive economic opportunities for the farming population, ecological sustainability is imperative for Punjab to maintain its natural resource base. In particular the increase in the intensity of rice production is associated with the decline of the water table in Punjab in 75 percent of the land; while soils are deficient in some of the main macro and micronutrients due to the high nutrient demand of major cash crops (Statistical Abstracts 2005). With the emphasis on cash crops and high yield varieties to feed the central pool, varieties of pulses, maize, millet and sorghum, and oilseeds and indigenous cotton varieties, as well as a number of uncultivated greens have received less attention despite their role in securing the sustainability of soil and water use, in controlling pest and crop diseases, and in providing for adequate nutrition and health to the rural Punjabi population, with total area under maize reducing to 28 percent of its original cropped area, indigenous cotton reducing to 16 percent of its original cropped area, and pulses reducing to 2.35 percent of its cropped area (Statistical Abstracts). The total area under crops these crops, which are not priced at a high market value, have shown decreases. Though addressing the structural issues behind the production of cash crops in Punjab has been a serious debate in the region for decades, and will require serious consideration on the part of policy makers if there is to be any serious attempt to address environmental issues in the region. This means balancing the need food security with ecological stability

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and the need for safe, pesticide free food for the rural population. While issues of agrobiodiversity have received considerable attention by researchers in other regions throughout continental South Asia14, researchers in Punjab have placed little emphasis on the need for conservation of indigenous grains, aside from the need for organic kitchen gardens15. 4.2 INPUT AND LABOR INTENSIVE SYSTEMS VS. WOMEN AS FARMERS Also being called into question here is the emphasis on external inputs at the exclusion of women as farmers and cultivators. Of all states in India, Punjab claims the greatest dependency on agricultural inputs, especially chemical fertilizers and pesticides, increased mechanization, and use of farm labor from other states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Since the beginning of the Green Revolution, Punjab has seen an eightfold increase in the use of chemical fertilizers16; a 13.7 fold increase in the use of farm machinery from 1960-6117; and still relatively high levels of pesticide consumption Punjab has increased from 2353 metric tons in 1980-81, to 40672 metric tons in 2005, 7300 metric tons in 1994-95 but I came down to 5970 MT in the year 2005-0618 (Statistical Abstracts 2005). With the emphasis on inputs as the primary means to sustain production, women’s knowledge of crops have been marginalized by programs that exclusively support crops that sell at high market value. With this, efforts to support women’s knowledge in agriculture both at the farm and household level are largely absent from policy provisions and research stations. Agricultural development policies largely favored male farmers, with women have largely been pulled into the household with less of a role in agricultural production. In Punjab, males are largely credited for work in agricultural labor, though women’s workdays are recorded to be 55 to 92 percent longer in Punjab (Kaur 2005). Much of women’s work is in animal husbandry, in dairying, and milking, feeding, and bathing animals19. Given that rural women’s work has had limited visibility in census data, even when the activities are intended to meet market goals, the larger question remains how women’s subsistence work, such as home gardening, seed preservation, and agrobiodiversity management is valued by government policies. Women in rural Punjab still play a vital role in providing nutritional food to rural households through their careful selection of and gendered knowledge of vegetables, legumes, grains, and oils used in food preparation. Further, their knowledge of cultivars extends beyond the crops that are produced for the market, since many of the women admit that the food that is produced for the market is not adequate to feed their families. Understanding women’s roles by preserving knowledge and actively supporting their

                                                                                                               14Agrobiodiversity studies are often conducted in regions such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the South India, and the Himalayan states of Uttarkhand, and Northeastern Himalayan States such as Sikkim. 15 Punjab Agricultural University has recommended that Punjabi households keep organic kitchen gardens for fresh vegetables. 16 The Statistical Abstracts of Punjab demonstrate that fertilizer consumption increased from 213 nutrient thousand tons in to 1694 nutrient thousand tons in over the period of 1970-1 to 2005-06) 17 The Statistical Abstracts of Punjab demonstrate that in 1960-1, there were seven tractors per thousand hectares of land, which shot up to 96 in 1998-9 18 According too Rupinder Kaur, women’s work days are recorded to be 55 percent longer in the north-eastern region, percent longer in the backward north-eastern region, 70 percent longer in cotton growing South regions where this study has taken place, and 92 percent longer (almost double in the most developed Central region. See Kaur 2005.  

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engagement in the cultivation of diverse varieties required a shift in thinking about women’s roles in agriculture. 4.3 SCIENTISM VS. TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS With the Green Revolution, agricultural science in Punjab has been based off of models that show the supremacy of scientism20 at the expense of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) systems. In Punjab, scientific agriculture was established during the colonial period through the institute of crop science in Lahore as well as the irrigation systems that were set up as part of the colonial approach to capitalize off of agricultural production in Punjab. Ecologists and environmental historians in the South Asia context have noticed that the exclusive focus on science with its base at agricultural university has had a complex relationship with traditional management systems, specifically in the areas of forestry, water, and biodiversity management wherein management of the ‘commons’ were transferred to trained scientific managers21. Hence, community based management systems that were tied to the preservation the environmental in Punjab have since eroded. Specifically, under the Green Revolution, the dependency on science for the use and management of resources has left little room for approaches in agricultural universities that recognize interrelationships between humans, culture, and ecology. As a more dynamic paradigm, incorporating traditional environmental knowledge into ecological management programs would require a shift in thinking about the roots of scientific agriculture and impact this has had on crop varietal diversity. TEK has been defined as ‘a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief evolving from adaptive processes that is handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of human beings to one another and to the environment, and also includes the cultural and sociological variables used to support and sustain these knowledge systems, including ceremonies, festivals and social relationships. Alternative knowledge systems based on intergenerational transmission are now being more widely studied for their role in ecosystem productivity, biodiversity conservation, resource management, and the dualistic dependency between cultural diversity and biodiversity (Berkes 2000). Though other regions in South Asia such as fishing communities in Tamil Nadu, and farming communities in Bangladesh have given reasonable level of importance to this issue, there has been somewhat of a methodological disconnect between TEK and agroecosystem management in Punjab22. Community-based knowledge systems are often thought of unscientific by planners and therefor irrelevant to the primary goal of crop production. Integrated knowledge systems based on culture and gender specific use of resources provide an important pathway forward in conservation in the region.                                                                                                                20 Scientism has been defined as a ‘philosophical position that exalts the methods of science above all other modes of inquiry,’ while science involves the use of the scientific method. See Ryder 2005. 21 Ramachandra Guha uses the example of forest management to discuss how colonial era forest policies in India transferred ownership from village level ownership to the Forest Department during the construction of the railroads. 22 In 2004 Punjab State Council for Science and Technology, the main body in Punjab dedicating to research and management of the ecology of Punjab has indicates some effort to researching TEK, there are fewer resources that have been directed for the end goal of documenting and preserving this knowledge for sound ecosystem resource management in Punjab.  

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5. Conclusion: A Way Forward This study attempts to make room for an alternative discourse on agriculture Punjab in the post-Green Revolution era through a qualitative analysis of the relationship between women, agrobiodiversity, and folk heritage, both in traditional farming systems and as the basis for agroecological security in Punjab today. In the first chapter I lay down the foundations of the Green Revolution and its relationship to the discourse on women, agrobiodiversity, and folk heritage. In the second chapter, I examine elder Punjabi women’s reflections on traditional farming systems in attempt to highlight the traditional linkages between gendered labor and women’s material relationship with agrobiodiversity and folk culture. In the third chapter, I examine the work of Women Action for Ecology, a recent campaign to revive women’s folk heritage in Punjab to preserve the heritage of agrobiodiversity and traditional foods. In the fourth chapter, I examine how the experience of the women engaged in the campaign can contribute to a new ecological discourse in Punjab as a way to reengage with the agricultural development paradigm’s conceptual basis, not to counter it entirely, but to make room enough to imagine new pathways for development. In speaking to Punjabi women, in acknowledging the way they see their reality, is my attempt is to critically engage with the Green Revolution, its vision and its promise. With the massive structural changes in the Punjabi economy from the Green Revolution period onwards towards market integration, I focus on women, biodiversity, and folk knowledge, not to essentialize the vitality of an agricultural past, but rather to examine how complex and interrelated systems can be particularly liberatory and relevant in the present as Punjab attempts to find footing amidst the withering gains of the Green Revolution. While the Punjabi economy experienced significant growth during the Green Revolution period, towards the 1990s the state as a whole experienced a deceleration in economic gains. Specifically, the growth rate of the net state gross domestic product (SGDP) hovered at 5.4 percent in the 1980s, while in the 1990s it started to slow to 4.7 percent, while growth of incomes from agriculture slid from 4.9 percent in the 1980s to .04 percent in the 1990s (Gill and Singh 2006). The decline in yields over the years, coupled with the high costs of production and investment in Green Revolution technologies and minimum support prices23 that have remained constant despite farmers declining incomes, have left a squeeze on Punjab’s rural workforce. Hence, economic diversification into what is known as the ‘secondary’ or industrial sector, and the ‘tertiary sector,’ or service sector, is the recommended pathway for Punjab to emerge out of its current agrarian crisis, provide job opportunities for youth, and absorb labor from the rural workforce. Where then does the discourse around gender, agrobiodiversity, and traditional ecological knowledge fit within Punjab’s post-Green Revolution industrialized agrarian economy? For this we must look at the value of agrobiodiversity for human-ecological systems and critically assess the social, environmental and economic benefits derived from biodiversity protection. This includes properly assessing the benefits of agrobidioversity for ecosystem function as state policy, including: the preservation of biological resources for both plants and animals which form the genetic safety net of agriculture; soil fertility support through the proper maintenance of soil organisms; nutrient cycling or ensuring that important minerals are absorbed through the soil and taken up through crops to avoid crop losses; pest                                                                                                                23 Guaranteed prices that farmers can sell wheat and paddy to the government for. Though the costs of producing these crops have gone up, the MSP has stayed the same, adding more to the debt burden of farmers.

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and disease control to avoid excessive use of chemical inputs; and water quality and quantity maintenance (Thrupp 268). Specifically, agrobiodiversity provides the most ecological value not solely through the addition of more crops, through the species assemblages that promote ecosystem resilience, pest resistance, and the cycling nutrients, as a comprehensive food security policy. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, signed at the United Nations Convention on Environment and Development in 1992, India agreed to:

• Develop a national strategy for the sustainable use of biological diversity and make it part of the national development strategy.

• Assess the state of existing biodiversity and conduct research to

understand its importance in ecosystem functioning, production of goods, and environmental benefits

. • Encourage traditional knowledge in agriculture, forestry, wildlife

management, etc. through the involvement of local communities.

• Implement fair and equitable sharing of benefits from biodiversity use under Intellectual Property Rights agreements.

• Protect natural habitats and promote rehabilitation of degraded

ecosystems.

• Establish means to control risks from organism modified by biotechnology and prevent the introduction of alien species that threaten ecosystems; and

• Conduct Environmental Impact Assessment studies of projects, which threaten natural environments by ensuring the participation of an informed public (Jerath 2005).

With the major challenge to the promotion of women’s knowledge in agriculture in Punjab being the emphasis on high yield varieties and the extension of colonial era-policies that obscure women and agricultural biodiversity in policy conversations, a genuine pathway for the protection of the Punjab’s agrobiodiversity heritage depends on the following:

-The removal of economic incentives towards high yield wheat and paddy crops only, and promoting incentives for traditional biologically diverse agriculture such as awareness and rewards for preservation.

-The of procurement programs to millets, pulses and crops other than wheat and rice only. Currently, the national procurement policies focus on wheat and rice only. As other groups such as the Deccan Development Society have suggested the public distribution system (PDS) should reflect food and crop diversity to increase the demand of diverse crops.

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-The investment in Research and Development on agricultural biodiversity at Punjab Agricultural University, including the economics of agricultural biodiversity preservation. This also means including biodiversity in the curriculum at the university so students of agriculture can learn to actively promote biodiversity and build models to conserve biodiversity. -The promotion of traditional farming systems, integrated pest management, and natural/organic fertilizers and pesticides, through extension services. -The emphasis on the marketing of cash crops and processed foods should be tempered through education and the media. Agrobiodiversity and safe food should be included in the curricula in colleges and schools as well as in school diets.

While any strong policy would be gender sensitive, additional gender-specific measures to support Punjabi women and their knowledge of agricultural biodiversity in policy provisions include:

-Financial and market support for the development of womens’ enterprises to support agrobiodiversity. Building avenues for women to sustain microenterprises in rural areas to make women’s agriculture economically strong

-Supporting women extension agents and policymakers, and professors in universities.

-Support for womens’ groups in villages for documentation of knowledge in partnership with university environmental departments as well as ownership of intellectual property rights.

-University curricula on agriculture should recognize the role and value of women in preserving agrobiodiversity, especially in relation to ecological sustainability.

-Providing social incentives including awards and honors for rural women who support and conserved agrobiodiversity, as well as NGO leaders and academics who contribute to the value of agricultural biodiversity at the state level.

Hence, agriculture in Punjab is no doubt, an important role in preserving the food security of the nation, but as long as the processing activities of agriculture segregate the process of production from the social and ecological context, the challenges facing the agriculture will continue to grow. As others have suggested, the immediate needs are for Punjab to diversity its development pathways, and providing skills training so that the farming community has a reliable means of earning income as some of the rural youth transition into new positions in industry and services. At the same time, the natural resource and nutritional needs of the state will be an ongoing challenge, and unless Punjab examines ways to rebuild its biological safety net, which extends from the biophysical resources to the human communities that are still dependent on them for survival in an increasingly modernized state, the state could face the potential of more challenges future in the form of inadequate health, and the lack of available supply of resources, and fewer economic opportunities. By acknowledging the voice of

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Punjabi women that have bore witness to the Green Revolution project that has been transformative, but also transient and capricious at the same, we hope to wedge a critical space in the development agenda that encourages us examine who development is for, and to what ends is it sought, and who it includes; I hope in this process of stepping aside, we can create space for alternative solutions that Punjabi women themselves are imagining and are perhaps more relevant to a reality that they know best.  

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GLOSSARY OF COMMON PUNJABI TERMS Ajwaan: Carom Seeds Alsi: Flaxseed Bajra: Millet Boliyan: Punjabi women’s folk songs Cha: Tea, usually prepared with milk and solidified cane sugar Charkha: Spinning wheel Chacha/chachi: Younger paternal uncle and aunt Chula: Traditional Punjabi stove Chutney: Side sauce to be eaten with meal Chhalia: Corn cobs Chhole: Chickpeas Dahi: Yogurt Gajar: Carrots Giddha: Punjabi Women’s Folk Dance Goha: Cowdung Gond Katire: Tragacanth gum used in cold drinks and traditional medicine Goware: Green Beans Gurdwara: Sikh temple Kanak: Wheat Kapah: Indigenous cotton Kadhu: Squash Khad: Fertilizer

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Kheer: Rice pudding Kichdi: A porridge traditionally made out of millets, pulses, ginger, butter, and other spices Kudrati Kheti: Natural Farming, or farming without fertilizers and pesticides and using traditional methods Lassi: Thin yogurt drink Maa: Black lentils Malpure: A sweet, syrupy flatbread Makki: Corn Makhni: Butter Masur: Red Lentils Matti/Mattia: Savory snack Mirch: Pepper/Spice Moongphali: Peanuts Mooli: Radish Moth: Mung Bean Nalka: Communal water tap Narma: Cotton that was widely grown in Punjab during the British Colonial Period Pakore: Chickpea flour based fried vegetables Parshaad: A mixture of dough, butter and sugar Pinni/Pinniya/Pinne: A round sweet made out of dough and sugar Peeng Chutna: To swing on a swing Roori: Traditional Cowdung based fertilize Roti: Punjabi flatbread made on a warm plate out of ground dough Sabji: Vegetables

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Salgam: Radish Sawan da mahina: Monsoon season Sevia: Vermicelli Thoria: Squash Til: Sesame Seed Jowar: Sorghum Theeyan: A folk tradition in Punjab that would take place during the monsoon season when women used to return to their native village, dance, sing, swing on the village tree, and prepare and enjoy traditional foods. Trinjan: A folk tradition in Punjab where women used to gather on someone’s porch through the night to spin yarn on their spinning wheels and enjoy small snacks like vermicelli and rice pudding. Thai/ Thaee: Elder paternal uncle and aunt Zamana Baldagia: ‘The times have changed’  

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