Engendering commons community

Samhita Barooah

(The writer can be reached at samhitaworld@gmail.com)

Farmers' protest is going on for the last few months along the borders of Delhi. As the perceptions unfold, the protests are growing intense and collective consciousness is growing stronger. This protest began with a blended diversity of farmers in groups, unions, organized spaces and prepared to resist despite violent suppression. The societal expectations were also about being strategic in a politically volatile scenario with consistent provocations from multiple ends of people's politics. Constant stifling of prominent voices, targeted integrity assassination of emerging and prominent leaders, spreading of disbelief, disregard, constant collapse of conscientized reporting and fabricated imagery of series of events according to vote bank politics. Full blown toxic patriarchy demonstrated through deployment of barricades, uniformed personnel, disjointed civic amenities, closure of borders of the national capital in lieu of national security has indeed instilled rising fears amongst the communities of change and transformation. The nation had witnessed many mutinies for peace, freedom, co-existence, dignity and hope in last 8 decades and Delhi had witnessed such events. This protest symbolized such struggles from survival and sustenance. People across the nation are being cajoled into loans, self-reliance promises, job offers without social security and consistency, packages after packages which are customized with promises for the powerful and pennied classes of India.

What can a landless, tractorless, organic, subsistence food crop, non-male, gender diverse, woman farmer do? Gender diverse and women farmers without land, capital, identity proofs, resources of cattle, water, electricity or vehicles like tractors and power tillers are practically negligible in this community struggle for survival of justice, equity and compassion. Farmers have diverse categories across the country. Some are self-conscious and proud of their contribution to the agrarian sectors of the economy, some prefer to tag themselves as farm owners, farm innovators, scientific farmers and farm producers in the farming areas of the country. But many farmers are not yet aware of their farmer identity and their priceless contribution towards the knowledge, species, bio and agro diversity of the ecological food and nutrition safety and security of the country. Most women and non-male farmers co-create, withstand, revive and restore health of both soil and living organisms. But such people are constantly pressured with agrarian sexism, oppression, distinct gender stereotypes in the farming sectors. If a farmer family receives a tractor by some stroke of luck, favour and convenience, women and non-male farmers are forbidden to have access or ownership of such facilities. Women's work gets confined to the home ecology as per her life cycle shifts. In this context of farmers in rural and peri-urban pockets of India, Dalit, Adivasi, dependent, generational, custodian, diversity securing farmers across genders work tirelessly within the nature driven norms in home gardens, common farms, Jhum lands, community forest farms, collective water bodies, terrace ecosystems and food, fodder, fuel, herbs, fruits and seed farms which sustains lifelines rather than economic livelihoods. These farmers produce, sustain, regenerate and restore seeds, food chains from under the soil to across the atmosphere ensuring health, sustenance, ecological security and every element of human and nature symbiosis. Lack of resources to monetize such farm activities have ensured the knowledge diversity and farming techniques in practice much more sustainable than huge economic and ownership of machinery catering to the market needs alone. Farm activities are not only human centric but also nature centric to withstand climate and biodiverse variations mostly having human causes.

Today the women and gender diverse self-sufficient subsistence farmers are untouched by the farm laws as they find themselves realizing swaraj in the real sense by owning their own ancestral seeds, manure, fodder, ecological knowledge of biodiversity and resources for future health and family security. Home grown, indigenous, non-toxic and organic women and gender diverse farmers are shrinking in the mad rush for exports and monetized agrarian economy. In this regard the Naga women farmers, Dalit women farmers of Deccan areas, tribal farmers of forest farms in different parts of India, fish farmers of coastal India, pastoralist farmers of western and northen India, mountain farmers of northern, southern and north-eastern India, riverine and wetland food crop farmers of Manipur, Tripura, Assam and the custodians of sacred groves and fish sancturies of Meghalaya, Western Ghats, Central India are the pathfinders of climate resilient biodiverse agroecology in tiny pockets of the country. These are communities of farmers whose perspectives are drawn towards a solidarity based regenerative economy ensuring health, social, cultural, community and family security with indirect resource rich advantages.

Such farmers might be agender or women as well but they are making sure that the diversity of farms, species, tastes, food choices, seasons, cultural and collective value driven efforts are restored and regenerated equitably throughout the generations. All women and agender farmers in the Singhu border protests are concerned about the future of their families, farm lands, forests and food crops which they provide to the nation. Food, nutrition and immunity security are the long term measures to withstand corona centric health concerns and towards a cancer free society.

A self-sufficient healthy population is a concern for the consumption driven monetized economy. It can close shops of multiple businesses outside the food farm sectors. Hence the resistance is through water cannons, farm laws, linear policies and predominant patriarchal structural violence. Women and gender diverse farmers are withstanding the brunt of economy, ecology, climate, inappropriate technology, lack of knowhow and socio-cultural dynamics which favours the heteronormative masculine identity of farmers. Farmers are co-creating space for themselves and gender diverse farmers are ensuring that their identities, discourses and diversity restores the queerness of commons in society and nature which is life-giving not life-threatening. Pluriversity inherent in the subsistence commons are claiming the queer spaces to restore hope and survival.