A study into a local Community Farming/Regreening Initiative, focussing on the various dimensions that trigger an individual’s passion or interest towards the environment. The study also led to the creation of a framework to understand one’s relationship with nature. Prepared in February 2024.
“I joined the Community Farming Group because Usha asked us to.”
“Thandige gaali baratte, sutta mutta parisara beliyatte.”
“The IB Curriculum has components of Activity and Service required to get a diploma.”
When Usha Narayanan started Community Farming in our locality, she was coming from a place of passion. She wanted to regreen the spaces around her, to regenerate food sources that local wildlife lost to construction and deforestation activities in our area. She connected with local farmers, took charge of their unused land, and turned them into organic farms of fruit trees ad vegetable gardens. She roped in her neighbours, local schools and even people in local governance. Her community farming project is “a network of individuals” spread across Karnataka (one could even say across India), united by the common goal of regreening spaces. These small-scale projects have repeatedly had a large-scale impact – in the case that first caught my attention, her regreening efforts facilitated the local government to begin rejuvenating the Rajanukunte lake near Doddaballapur Road.
A painting by one of the participating women of Usha aunty’s Community Farming project, made to mark the first anniversary of the group’s efforts.
Early community movements like the Chipko movement in India stemmed from a connection with nature characterised by respect. While initially the drive for the Chipko movement was towards protecting the source of agriculture and household requirements, in later years the movement turned its focus into larger, ecological concerns like the management of forests (Guha and J 1997). Such drives seem to correspond to an indigenous worldview of an active nature, and a human-nature relationship based on and characterised by respect – a way of living that scientific worldviews uprooted, turning nature into a passive provider that needed to be controlled for human gain (Merchant 1992).
The role of community in such a scene, becomes a strong one. Direct action was the chosen means for indigenous tribes and displaced residents of forests, to protest the destruction of nature from the higher-ups, the people more distant from nature, the neo-colonialists (Guha and J 1997). In today’s corporate world, such direct action can also be understood in terms of collective responsibility (O'Neill n.d.) – of people groups holding each other accountable for a commonly agreed-upon goal. This framework seems fitting as a modern-day articulation of community efforts like Chipko, within natural contexts.
Usha aunty’s project seems to largely embody this spirit of collective responsibility – the participants of her work are not just her neighbours or school children. Local Panchayat members too, participate and not just facilitate. Women, men, children, and grown-ups, all contribute in equal capacities – some on ground, some through more passive methods like donations and funds. But the collective spirit keeps the entire network responsible for regreening spaces that their lifestyles (schools, houses, offices) have taken over.
The larger question in my head was – where does this collective spirit come from? I was keen to see what the ‘Community’ aspect was in the Community Farming projects. Was it about the presence of a group? Was it about an individual’s family background? Was there an individual image of nature that drove people to take part in this project, or was it a pastime?
An image from one of the Community Farming days, at the hillock behind our community.
Of the diverse populations taking part in the project, I spoke to school students and women in my neighbourhood. This covered an economic range of lower-middle to upper-classes and an education level of high-school to Masters’ degree holders. Occupationally, my sample included students, housewives, and working women: