Crossing the Internal Frontiers - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 181

and productive, and they are doing so by crossing a multitude of personal,
family and community frontiers.
The Land Without a Farmer Becomes Barren
Far from the cotton plains, but in a similarly dry and challenging environ-
ment, women and men in southern India are redesigning their landscapes
and communities. Farmers in central Tamilnadu live in a rain shadow of
the western Ghats, an area known for acute droughts and erratic monsoons.
They have a saying: 'The land without a farmer becomes barren - thaan vuzhu
nilam thariso.' 17 When I first walked to the village of Paraikulum, an unas-
suming settlement of 60 households several kilometres from the nearest
road, the 50 hectares of land above the village were barren. Villagers could
remember a time when they were cultivated, but over the years conflicts
and land-grabs had undermined cooperation. This area is so dry that it
is home to India's match and firework industry. Yet, when it does rain, the
water simply rushes off of the barren land to join distant rivers, and a
valuable resource is wasted.
Paraikulum, though, is lucky. It is one of 47 villages in the district of
Virudhunagar with whom a group called the Society for People's Educ-
ation and Economic Change collaborates. John Devavaram, Erskine
Arunothayam and Rajendra Prasad and their colleagues began their work
here in the mid 1980s. Their approach has been to help form self-help
groups, or sanghas , and to build the social and human capital of the area
so that environmental improvements can be made and then sustained. The
effect on the landscape and community has been remarkable. After the
Paraikulum women's sangha was formed, Pandiyammal, Laxmi and neigh-
bours decided to recover the barren land through careful planning of
physical and biological water-harvesting measures. They redesigned the
fields, so that water would be used effectively.
Now when it rains, the water is channelled, collected and ponded, and
seeps into the ground to replenish aquifers. This has produced a double
benefit. Firstly, the watershed turned green within three years, as crops
could now be grown there. Secondly, enough water was collected in the
tank for the community to irrigate the tiny 12-hectare patch of wetland
rice close by the village for an extra season each year. With existing
resources (after all, the water had been there), they now produce an extra
30-50 tonnes of rice each year. Increasing cropping intensity on small
patches in this way offers great hope for farmers of the drylands in many
parts of the world. But it requires community organization and motivation.
The upper watershed is now unrecognizable. When I first walked across