Biovillages: a blueprint for the future?

The father of India's Green Revolution--and early critic of its abuse -- has a new brainchild: villages where the poor have the means to earn their living and preserve the land

The 20th century ended with spectacular achievements in every field of human endeavour and the spread of democratic systems of government. It also ended with nearly a billion people going to bed partially hungry and with the universal goals of "food, health, literacy and work for all" still remaining distant dreams. The uneven progress in bringing the benefits of modern science and technology to the least well-off, particularly in the areas of medicine, agriculture, information technology and biotechnology, has led to increasing divides between rich and poor in areas that are critical to human wellbeing: demographic distribution, technological and digital access, and economic power.

Any objective balance sheet of human achievements during the 20th century thus reveals both "bright" spots in relation to prosperity built on technological innovation, and "hot spots" where poverty, deprivation and gender inequity remain, and in some cases have even worsened.

The M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation was established in Chennai [formerly Madras] in India in 1990 with the aim of addressing environmental degradation, population explosion, poverty and gender injustice at the micro-level in a few such social "hot spots." The Foundation's mandate is to impart a pro-nature, pro-poor and pro-women orientation to an economic growth strategy in rural areas--a strategy that above all else focuses on creating jobs. This emphasis stems from the fact that jobless economic growth is joyless growth, and the observation that inadequate purchasing power is the overriding cause of household food insecurity.

The Union Territory of Pondicherry in the state of Tamil Nadu was chosen as the place to start this adventure in empowering women and men mired in poverty with skills, information and access to technology. Such people are poor only because they have no assets--no land, no livestock, no houses and often no education. Their only assets are time and labour. Our challenge was therefore to enhance the economic value of these assets, a goal that could be achieved through a transition from unskilled to skilled work. Asset building and community development have to be the pathways for the lasting eradication of poverty. This calls for a paradigm shift in thinking about development from a "do good" approach based on patronage to one of genuine partnership with the poor. Mahatma Gandhi in India was one of the first to deprecate the policy of "poor feeding," insisting that governments and communities must enable everyone to earn his or her daily bread.

Eco-jobs and micro-credit to boost village income

These considerations led to the birth of the biovillage movement in Pondicherry. The term "biovillage" is derived from the Greek word bios, which means living, and our priority was just that: human-centred development. Poverty persists in conditions where human resources are undervalued whereas land and material resources are overvalued. The biovillage model of rural and agricultural development is designed to remedy this imbalance by conserving and enhancing natural resources, eradicating poverty and empowering women.

This programme has been in progress in 19 villages in Pondicherry since 1994, covering a population of 24,000 people, though we have plans to extend the scheme to around 375,000 people throughout the region by 2007. One leg of the programme is eco-farming, meaning that chemicals and capital--the building blocks of modern farming--are replaced with knowledge and biological inputs like vermiculture [exploitation of earthworms], bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides; this in turn creates new eco-jobs in villages. The programme's other leg is the creation of more avenues for rural non-farm employment based on marketing opportunities.

New opportunities for earning a living are devised through analyzing a family's resources. As a result, landless labouring families take to household mushroom cultivation, ornamental fish-rearing, coir rope-making, rearing small ruminant animals under stall-fed conditions and other enterprises which are within their means. Those with a small plot of land can take to hybrid seed production, floriculture, dairying, poultry and other high value enterprises. Groups of assetless women engage in aquaculture in community ponds. All these exercises are based on micro-level planning, and enterprises supported by micro-credit.

A range of activities helps enhance total income (which has risen on average by $23 per month per capita for villagers) and minimize risks. Education and training, social organization and producer-oriented marketing are all crucial to the programme's success. Self-help groups operate a community banking system involving low transaction costs and high loan recovery. Most importantly, the biovillage movement is based on inclusion and not exclusion. The local women and men who become trainers are inducted into a Biovillage Corps of Rural Professionals.

An ever-green approach to environmental awareness

Most of the nearly 100 members inducted so far are either semi-literate or even illiterate, but they are the prime-movers and doers of the biovillage movement, proving beyond all doubt that the rural poor can take to new technologies like fish to water, provided they are able to learn through practical work experience and not classroom lectures.

How can such a biovillage movement spread? With the help of the Pondicherry administration, we propose to convert all 270 villages in the Territory into biovillages, a plan that will require a further $15 million (most of which will come from ongoing programmes for the poor and possibly from the International Fund for Agricultural Development). Several institutional structures have accelerated the pace of change. A Biovillage Council, comprising a male and female member from each village, under-takes strategic planning. A Biocentre serves as a single-stop resource centre, providing the necessary inputs, information and training. And lastly, a rural knowledge centre with an Internet connection provides information to families on health, education, entitlements, eco-technologies and marketing.

The biovillage model helps bridge all four divides--demographic, digital, economic and technological. It promotes harmony with nature and with each other. It is based on eco-technologies, which are environmentally benign, economically viable and socially equitable. It shows the path to an ever-green revolution in agriculture, where productivity advances can take place without leading to ecological or social harm. The choice of technologies is flexible. And while the concept has certain ground rules, like a "pro-nature, pro-poor and pro-women" orientation to spreading technology and a partnership approach to eradicating poverty the precise action plans are developed by the villagers in association with professionals. The virtual colleges linking scientists and rural families help to hasten the spread of such symbiotic partnerships. Under UNESCO's Asian Ecotechnology Network, the biovillage paradigm of sustainable human development is now spreading to other parts of India and to other nations. It has led to th e emergence of many new voices and leaders in the villages, who in turn ensure the programme--like the communities it involves--can survive and prosper.

KEY FIGURES, INDIA

Total population: 998 million (1999)

GNP per capita: US$450 (1999)

Agricultural workers as share of total population: 60 % (2000)

69% (1980)

Agriculture as share of GDP: 28 % (1999)

38 % (1980)

Sources: UN Food and AgricultureOrganization, World Bank.

M.S. SWAMINATHAN

During his five-decade long career as a scientist, Professor M.S. Swaminathan has won several international awards, including the first World Food Prize in 1987. The head of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (Chennai, India), he holds the UNESCO Cousteau chair in Ecotechnology and is the author of/predict: A Century of Hope--Harmony with Nature and Freedom from Hunger, East West Books Pvt. Ltd, Chennai, 1999.

COPYRIGHT 2001 UNESCO
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