Another village, similar view

In January this year I visited the Rajasthan part of the Chambal valley to study a water resources management project implemented by an NGO. Accompanied by my local guide Sathish Mishra, I hiked along a tributary of the Chambal river, the Kali Sindh. At Bor Khedi village in Jhalawar district, smoke billowing near the edge of the river aroused curiosity. But Mishra asked me to stay calm. `Kanjars are preparing illicit liquor,' he whispered.

My guide then walked for a mile, spoke to people, and got permission for an interview. I found out later that people of Bor Khedi usually brew illicit liquor along river banks and ravines. I was shocked to see over a dozen children, including a few toddlers, burning firewood to prepare country liquor.

While photographing the smoke-filled liquor pots, I nearly stumbled on some open cables. Mishra cautioned me not to step forward. They were death traps, he said and added that the cables transport stolen electricity from the nearby power line to private motors.

The people pumping water close-by were giving us suspicious looks. But I managed to summon the resolve to ask them why their children were not at school. That broke the ice. Munni Bai, a mother of three gave a toothy grin and assured me that her community was no longer involved in robbery.

She was alluding to a stigma that has remained with the Kanjars since colonial times. The Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, classified the community as a criminal tribe. Of course, after independence, the term ‘criminal tribe' was removed from the statute book. But local social workers argue that tribal communities such as the Kanjars, Sansis, and Pardhis continue to be discriminated socially and by local law enforcement authorities even today.

But there was little bitterness in Munni Bai's voice when she said that governments had turned a blind eye to her community for nearly a century. The adults present there nodded in approval. Life was hard in the ravines, they said almost as a matter of fact. Arable lands was obviously precious and it was not difficult to see why there were several land disputes.

Munni Bai pointed to a reservoir and said it stored water pumped with the use of illicit electricity. Proceeds from illicit liquor sale supplemented the villagers' meagre farm income.

I asked the villagers about their illicit pursuits: electricity theft and country liquor production. Munni Bai replied that if the government assisted them in establishing a lift irrigation system, the Kanjars could irrigate more land and would have no need to steal electricity or to produce illicit liquor.

I seem to have struck a rapport with the people of Bor Khedi. More people in the village came forward to talk. The village head said that the stolen electricity was available for only five hours every day and 15 households could irrigate about 5 hectares (ha).

It struck me later that stealing electricity was quite a risky business. The method involved an overhead power cable over which a metal hook was hung; a wire took the electricity from this hook to households. People of Bor Khedi told me that three people and five animals had been electrocuted in the past two years when they stepped on open cables.

The visit to Bor Khedi was quite disquieting. Was there no way to ease the village's problems? I wondered. Manoj Gupta, an irrigation engineer, later told me that it would not actually take much to set up a lift irrigation system in the village. It would cost about Rs 15 lakh and irrigate 20 ha, he said.

The prime minister had promised a Rs 25,000-crore package for rural agriculture during his independence day speech in 2007. "We will see a boost in food grain production in all parts of the country, particularly in regions untouched by the first green revolution,' the prime minister promised.

I don't know if people of Bor Khedi are aware of the prime minister's announcement. Anyhow it seems that the village is still waiting for the independence day largesse. And what of the several hundreds of other Bor Khedis in the country?

The writer, Govindasamy Agoramoorthy is professor of environmental sciences at Tajen University, Taiwan.

Getting to know the Kanjar

It is past 3 in the afternoon and we are in Beriakheri, one of the 18 Kanjar villages in Jhalawar district. Majority of those who congregate under a shady tree are not the singing-dancing type kanjar found elsewhere. Theirs is the story of pain, of daily survival, of economic deprivation, of resource crunch and of social exclusion. Each of the 37 households may have been granted land lease but their patch of lands is someone else property, the ones who exude power over the meek. Rightly said, the meek will have to defend themselves!

Houses are random assortment of mud bricks or stone tiles, empty from within and consequently bereft of doors. With limited access to much publicized social development programs, the kanjar live on the edge of survival. Since their surrender before the police a year ago, their presence is counted on a daily basis by the night patrol. `We all line up when the police comes calling past midnight each day,’ the youth echo in chorus. They feel it is to their convenience, escaping (often false) charges that they have been booked under for most of the post-independence era.

The more you hear them the more intriguing it gets. What keeps them going? Locally brewed liquor seems their survival fluid, for beating hunger and for catching sleep. Curiously, they have survived generations without accumulating physical resources. Many youth do possess mobile phones, but that’s about all one could see in their possession. We begin to wonder if conventional baseline data could take us any further. Unless we fathom the household survival economics, cultural dynamics and external influences, getting to know the kanjar will remain an enigma.

Clearly, these are early days in our quest to know the kanjar. Within the keywords listed above, we see a ray of hope in mapping their individual and group existence.

- Sudhirendar Sharma, RPS Yadav and Harish Gena

Check dam in village Jarel with houses in the background

Making a case for Kanjar

Considered to be notorious, any idea of rehabilitating Kanjar tribe with livelihoods plans raises expectations as well as anxiety. In unsubstantiated common perception the Kanjar tribe is considered habitual offender, a social stigma that has marginalized the already `marginal’ community a great deal. Any attempt at bringing them into the mainstream must solicit an appreciation of their past.

The Kanjar
Derived from the Sanskrit kanana-chara, kanjar means wonderer in the jungle. They claim to have originated in Rajasthan, where they served as servants of the Rajputs & Jats. The Kanjar then had to flee to the jungles to avoid Moghul persecution. Since that period, they have been living a nomadic life of hunter gatherer. Some consider them to have descended from a Manu Guru and his wife Nathiya Kanjarin. They are divided into four clans, the Callad, Superala, Patharkat and Rachhband.

In Punjab, a section of Kanjar has historically associated with prostitution. Consequently, the muslim Kanjar of Punjab (notably in Pakistan) has always accepted fresh recruits. Those who have followed the profession for generations are called deradars, and look down upon the latter recruits. The Kanjar also supplied the executioners during the period of Moghul and Sikh rule in the Punjab.

Come the British and Kanjar get listed under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, as being a tribe `addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences.’ After independence, they were de-notified in 1952, when the Criminal Tribes Act was replaced with the Habitual Offenders Act, but the community continues to carry considerable social stigma till date.

In recent times, Kanjar have been engaged in settled agriculture, wage labour and in rickshaw pulling. The Kanjar chieftan or patel is very strong, and exercises a strong hold over the community. The Kanjar have also been connected with music, and the do offer public performances as well. The formal education, however, has been fairly low on account of stigmatized social exclusion.

The Present
Two villages inhabited by Kanjar viz., Jarel and Chandia Kheri, about 15 kms from Jhalawar, one of the 33 districts of Rajasthan, bordering Guna district of Madhya Pradesh, were visited on Nov 14, 2009. The dilapidated settlements seem of recent origin, the villages may have been no more than a generation old. This lends support to the observation that the tribe has largely been nomadic, presumably driven out by extraneous factors from their previous locations. Though Kanjar have been given patta for building houses, but for the few in the village a large majority is otherwise landless. The following insights were gained through short interactions with the villagers:

· Kanjar are socially stigmatized, their children are intimidated in schools by other children (notably gujar). Education status amongst young is very poor.
· Socially marginalized, most Kanjar engage in farm and wage labour at nearby mines with a few having opted for being watchman.
· With a majority of the households being landless, women are busy in household chores and occasional wage labour.
· Kanjar have the obligation to keep daily record of each male in the village and report to the police patrol who visits them daily at or around midnight.
· As if this humiliation is not enough, each Kanjar has to report to police before each outstation travel with details about the place/person being visited.
· The benefits of various welfare schemes of the government have yet to reach the community, their awareness level on such schemes being poor.
· The socially stigmatized community has been pushed to the margins of survival by the society and the state.

The Questions
It raises a series of questions. The general impression is that due to sustained engagement with the police, Kanjar have given up on their habitual offender lifestyle. However, it will be worthwhile to assess whether that has led to overall decline in petty crimes in the area or the charges they were booked under were ever established? Many Kanjar lament that on several occasions they have often been booked for crimes that they never committed. Two young boys narrated their pathetic story when they were picked up by the police while they were on way to taking school exams. They could never get back to school thereafter. Such stories of continued harassments abound!

Question 1: even if the police intimidation technique has worked, how long will the entire community be subjected to such harassment? Far from mainstreaming the community, does it not contribute to their further marginalization?

Given the social stigma, poor education and no assets, eking out a living for an average Kanjar must be a nightmare. Branded as habitual offenders, their esteem must be at the lowest. Their habitations bear their plight. They have even been exploited by the vested interests on employment guarantee under NREGA. But for the police, none of the government welfare schemes, be it on education, health, housing and skill-building have reached them. On the sight of an outsider, the households congregate to share their plight and express their demands as well.

Question 2: should the government not remove social discrimination against Kanjar and make extra efforts to converge schemes for the benefit of these communities? should not the government be sympathetic towards their rehabilitation?

Even when Kanjar receive the benefits of welfare schemes, the crucial issue will relate to their integration into the society. It is clear that the hunter-gatherer nomadic tribe was forced into petty crimes as their natural habitation (forests) was decimated all across. As a consequence, they might have had no option but to survive by extracting money through petty crimes. Enforcing law to get them out of the cycle of crime is part of the solution, providing sustained livelihoods alone can create a new cycle.

Question 3: can Kanjar integration into the society be possible without first uplifting their social esteem? can livelihoods security be created without providing the firm basis for it through land reforms?

The Beginning
Given the emphasis on the rehabilitation of Kanjar by the Government of Rajasthan, a window of opportunity exists to simultaneously move in both horizontal (social integration) and vertical directions (policy change) to create impact within a reasonable period of time. The macro picture points towards the following:

Social Level: Building an understanding on their social-historical past by connecting the dots to their present status will make sense. Their power dynamics, social customs and religious practices can help develop a holistic understanding on what constitutes Kanjar.

Survival Strategy: Kanjar have survived through thick and thin. What endures them and what keeps them going? What skills do them have or what inherent capacities of theirs can be re-built? To know their hopes and aspirations are as critical as their current status.

Livelihoods Cycle: Drawing livelihoods cycles of each family and collating these cycles to constitute a community livelihood status can be helpful in identifying the gaps and in locating welfare schemes and related programs to fill them.

Resource Mapping: The natural and infrastructure resource (PDS, housing, water, sanitation, education & health) base need to be mapped to fine-tune (or brought-in such programs if non-existent) to suit the needs of the community.

The `indicator’ of change would be the restoration of Kanjar pride by liberating them from the mandatory police reporting. Once that is achieved, the rest will follow.

The Process
Conventional community mobilization and development techniques and processes may have to be done away with in the present case. The idea is to first build a rapport and fellowship with the community, alongside identification of local leadership and entry points. Creative conversation with the community, at individual as well as community level, to understand them should be the first step. Getting a sense of the community needs and the existing opportunities, including training needs and resource mobilization, will help in baseline information collection and for developing livelihood programs. The entire process ought to be dynamic and adaptive.

Dr Sudhirendar Sharma