In a cluster of villages inhabited by Tharu tribals in the terai area of Uttarakhand, a nutrition survey discovered that despite other problems, people had managed to avoid malnutrition to a remarkable extent. The reason, as related by social activist Devyani working with this community, was linked to their traditional practice of having a lot of green leafy vegetables or saag in their everyday food not only saag cultivated by them but perhaps more so the numerous varieties collected from forests which on the basis of their traditional knowledge they could recognize as being not just edible but having a high nutrition value as well.

Another activist, Anita Damor, working among Bhil tribal communities in Rajasthan, while agreeing with the high nutrition content of traditional foods in her region, raised a different aspect of prevailing practices in her community. In several villages, breastfeeding was being denied to new-born children due to superstition or wrong beliefs. So, it was necessary to have a campaign here to convince people and mothers regarding the safety and desirability of breastfeeding for new-born children. These different aspects of traditional practices were revealed at a dialogue in Delhi where the consensus was on recognizing the high value of protecting traditional wisdom and utilizing it properly to meet existing challenges, while at the same time taking care to counter any harmful practices based on superstitions.

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In particular the value of traditional knowledge and practices related to agro-ecology, nutrition and health was emphasized at this dialogue in the context of meeting the challenges of climate change. This dialogue called Swaraj Samvad (Dialogue on Swaraj) – ‘Integrating Traditional Knowledge to Enhance Resilience to Climate Change’ was held at the India Habitat Centre, Delhi, from January 7 to 9. It was attended by nearly 500 participants from all over India. The dialogue was organized by Climate Rise Alliance and Vaagdhara, an organization working with tribal communities, particularly Bhil communities in Central India.

As Jayesh Joshi, one of the main organizers and founder-coordinator of Vaagdhara explained, he and his colleagues had been organizing Swaraj dialogues and foot marches in their work area for years, then expanded this effort to wider marches. Looking at the hope-giving results of this effort, they thought of a national dialogue. The Swaraj-related initiatives in the present context were explained by several participants in this dialogue as a combination of struggles as well as constructive activities which take rural communities, including tribal communities, closer to self-reliance based development. Progress along these lines can bring several benefits including strengthening of rural communities and increasing their capacity to contribute to climate change mitigation as well as adaptation.

Khushali of Climate Rise Alliance stated that there is an effort to move out of the shadow of a West-driven climate agenda and evolve an agenda of climate response more in tune with the needs, strengths and potential of India’s communities. If we look at village communities at the time of the independence, fossil fuel impact was very little and their dependence on expensive external inputs for farming and related livelihoods was also very little. Clearly in several other respects, development was needed, but Mahatma Gandhi emphasized that maintaining or increasing self-reliance of communities must get a high priority. His advice was ignored but subsequently it was seen that the growing dependence on external inputs had led to unbearably high costs for small farmers, increasing debt and livelihood crises.

In addition, now that climate change has become such an important issue, it is increasingly realized that the overall higher dependence of rural communities has included even higher dependence on fossil fuels. So the path of moving towards self-reliance, as advised strongly by Gandhi, now holds at least three rich promises in the current context. Firstly, it can contribute to reducing the crisis of small and medium farmers by reducing their external dependence and costs significantly. For this it is necessary that they are able to adopt social agro-ecology practices in a wise way in tune with local conditions. Here they can learn a lot from traditional systems and best practices which represent the accumulated experience of many generations of farmers.

Secondly, increasing self-reliance presents many opportunities of climate change mitigation by reducing the burden of fossil fuels as well as enabling more carbon absorption through soil conservation and afforestation. Thirdly, strengthened rural communities with more creativity, skills and resilience can reduce costs and debts of farmers, ensure better water conservation and contribute to climate change adaptation. So the path of higher self-reliance has relevance for almost all rural communities, but it has higher chances of success in many tribal communities that have been closer to self-reliance in their basic thinking. This was also reflected in the higher representation of tribal communities in the recent Swaraj Dialogue in Delhi.

At the same time tribal community leaders such as Gangabhai Paikra from Chattisgarh warned that several traditional aspects of the life of tribal communities are also deeply troubled today by recent and ongoing changes which have increased the cash expenses of households, increasing their debt to the extent that they are even losing some of their land. In the midst of such increasing difficulties, various participants at the dialogue emphasized, on the basis of their diverse field experiences, that traditional knowledge and wisdom when used carefully can contribute in many significant ways to resolving livelihood crisis situations as well as to protection of the environment.

(The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Man over Machine and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food.)