Sub- theme - VI Community Knowledge on Land use

Sub theme – VI

Community Knowledge on Land use

I am the earth. You are the earth. The Earth is dying. You and I are murderers. ~Ymber Delecto


Operational definition of Community and Community based Knowledge: Community is considered to be a group of people who live in close proximity, like the inhabitants of a village or of a locality in a town or city, the members of which interact with one another frequently on the basis of some common interests. A community need not always be a neighbourhood; people pursuing same or similar livelihood activity of an area and as a result interacting with one another frequently can also be described as community. Thus we can find a community of potters or blacksmiths inhabiting over a cluster of villages.

Community based Knowledge or CK can be described as a system of knowledge possessed by the members of a community in such a way that they themselves can put it to use, modify the same as and when required, and the knowledge is generally transmitted from one generation to another in verbal form.

Community based Knowledge vis-à-vis Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge: Often some terms like Indigenous Knowledge or Traditional Knowledge are also used to describe CK, as if those are synonymous. In the present context, however, we would prefer to use the term CK for certain reasons. The term indigenous is closely associated with a spatial dimension. Any idea or innovation that originated somewhere among some people and continued to be practiced by them for a considerably long period of time may be called indigenous. It, therefore, becomes essential to learn the history of the idea or innovation sufficiently before calling it indigenous. The term tradition again has a temporal connotation attached with it; one may ask how old a system should be so that it can be called ‘traditional’? In case a knowledge system is not properly recorded or documented it becomes difficult to know about its antiquity. Moreover, in common parlance, tradition often denotes something that has not been mixed up with recent ideas and innovations; but who would vouch for its purity? CK is comparatively free from such complicated relationship with time and space dimensions.

Development and Transfer of Community based Knowledge: Community based Knowledge need not be invented or innovated by a specific group of people holding and practicing it, in fact a community borrows most of the knowledge they make use of from others. But in course of time the people assimilate the knowledge and use it on their own; often they conduct various experiments as well to modify the knowledge or its application. For example, they might have borrowed a particular kind of seed from others along with the associated knowledge of how to cultivate it. But one would often find that the knowledge has been fine-tuned to the local situation and internalised by the people so completely that it has become an indistinguishable part of their body of knowledge about agriculture. Such knowledge is generally transferred from one individual to another through material transfer (seed), method transfer (water conservation technique) and capacity transfer (skill learning under teacher/father/mother) mode.

Relevance for Research: There are a few common pitfalls associated with study of CK. There was a time when almost all kinds of CK were discarded as non-scientific or pseudo-scientific. This was largely because Indians educated in ‘western’ thoughts refused to see reasonability or rationality in anything ‘non-western’. Then, as if in reaction to the rejection of all things desi (local), some people started glorifying all kinds of CK. They kept on discovering significant scientific principles and astonishing cause-effect relationship in every part of CK denying the fact that a large part of desi knowledge is inherently irrational. It should be made amply clear at this point that neither unconditional rejection nor unqualified glorification of any system of knowledge is desirable. The Indian communities have developed elaborate systems of classifying and categorising the living and non-living components of their environment on certain empirical foundations, which are yet to be fully classified and categorised by the scientists. To know about the natural resource base available to our nation, we need to study these knowledge systems in every detail. On the other hand there are certain ideas and practices found in the Indian communities, like changing course of weather by performing religious or magical rites or like controlling effect of cosmic bodies on human life by wearing jewel stones, can never be glorified in name of any kind of science, desi or phirangi.

Any knowledge or its application needs to be adjudged only on basis of the universally accepted attributes of scientific methodology. It has to be remembered that CK is people’s science and technology, it would presumably be less sophisticated in its logic, it would sometimes fail to state the relationship between cause and effect in clear terms, the experimentations would often be simple trial and error without the support of scientific information. Under such circumstances only documentation of what the people think or practice would not be enough, it has been mentioned that CK in its crude form would contain many elements that cannot be called ‘science’. It would be extremely necessary to validate the principles used by CK through well-designed and repeated experiments.

Components for Research: We find community based knowledge systems in all spheres of life of the people. The spheres can broadly be divided into two types; the manifestation of some knowledge systems like philosophy, poetry and music are primarily intangible, having no direct material expression. Some other systems of knowledge are related to agriculture, pottery, metal works, animal husbandry, health, building houses and other structures, have tangible or material manifestations. For the present purpose we would be dealing with the tangible ones only. By Community based Knowledge we would mean only the latter type and would exclude the former one.

Examples of community based knowledge on land use: There is innumerable numbers of community based knowledge items scattered around us. A little proportion is till date documented. Some of the examples are furnished below to trigger your interest in this field.
i. Farmers of a village of Bangladesh classified their village soil into eight classes for cultivating different crops, and managing nutrient and irrigation water. It was later found appropriate through validation at laboratory level by the scientists.
ii. The potters use different mixtures of soil and other ingredients for making pots with variability in treatments.
iii. Farmers prefer specific plant species for preparing compost or use as mulch as they observed it efficient.
iv. Rural people have developed different scientific structures and methods to conserve soil and water which are unique to their situations.

Scope of the Research Projects: In our country as well as elsewhere in world Community based Knowledge is often threatened on two counts. As CK is often held and practiced by non-industrial or pre-industrial communities, in industrial societies CK finds little relevance for itself in day-to-day life of the people. Moreover, the mass-produced commodities produced in factories pose serious threat to the articles produced by small-scale production units run by the communities with help of CK. Weavers, blacksmiths, potters and many other artisans for example are losing jobs because their products are being replaced by factory-made substitutes; once a CK goes out of practice, it is lost.

Another kind of challenge is posed to CK by the formal educational institutions. CK is rarely a part of the curriculum these institutions follow, so the children are not taught anything related to CK at formal schools and colleges. Very few children of this country find the opportunity of learning the elaborate knowledge systems from the elders at home or from the community elders. As a result the knowledge steadily goes out of circulation and gets lost.

Generally the people handling and practicing CK control their own economic activities to a large extent. The gradual shift from CK to formal knowledge and industrial culture erodes the free and willing participation of the communities in economic activities as well as in the process of development. It must be acknowledged that there are many elements in CK that can offer us sustainable developmental alternatives. Even a miniscule effort of documenting CK and recognising its strength and weakness through experimentation and validation can help us to understand this important body of human knowledge in its right perspective and prepare the ground for its judicious use.

General guidelines for developing and carrying out project work: For implementing a project the children and their guide teachers might broadly follow the steps suggested below; but the final design has to be fine tuned to their own ideas and the prevailing local situation. Some reference books, journals and websites may be consulted for triggering the idea from documented community practices.

• They would identify the topic of the project after talking to members of community and collect generalised information on that issue. A tentative work design can be prepared at this stage.
• They would identify the knowledgeable persons on the subject in the community and collect specific information in some detail from them hands-on. The work design would be finalised at this stage.
• The children themselves would work hands-on and conduct experiments to verify and validate what they have learnt from the knowledgeable elders. Ideally, they would work under supervision of both the guide teachers and the community elders while carrying out the experiments.
• If the children think that they can make use of the material and ideas used by the community in a different / innovative way, they would experiment with that again under supervision of the guide teachers and the community elders.
• The data collected from all the above steps would be analysed and inferences would be drawn.

Resource:
Honey Bee http://www.sristi.org
Inventory Indigenous Technical Knowledge in Agriculture (Vol 1 & Vol 2): Published by ICAR (2002 & 2003)