For most urban denizens, a kitchen garden means a piece of green in the backyard or on the terrace of their tenements, bungalows or even flats where they often grow some vegetables and offer to guests with pride as something homegrown. The concept has found favour, and also business, in an unlikely surrounding — the Musahar colonies, at least in some of them. Musahars, literally translated as rat killers and rat eaters, mostly live in certain regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh and the adjacent Bihar districts.
Even among the Scheduled Castes, they are considered the lowest‚ to the extent even other Dalits see them as 'untouchables' and their colonies are only politically seen as part of certain villages. The Musahars live in ‘tolis’, or ghettos, outside their designated villages. Musahars, estimated at some 30 lakh in Bihar and 10 lakh in Uttar Pradesh, in most areas are landless labourers who work at agricultural farms and brick kilns along with their children. They remain without work more than half a year. The community has now found an innovative solution at self-empowerment — kitchen gardens. "They are landless, yes, but they have spare pieces of land available around their homes, in the form of weeds or dumpyards. We made them cultivate the land. We provided seeds for seasonal vegetables. This took care of two things. One, they often slept hungry and when they started getting some wheat and rice as part of the public distribution system (PDS), there was nothing to accompany this. So, the vegetables we helped them grow helped them immensely. By now, many of them are not only growing vegetables to eat for themselves but also sell in the market,” says Shruti Nagvanshi of the People’s Vigilance Committee for Human Rights (PVCHR), a civil rights organisation working towards elevating the living standards of the Musahar community.
Most Musahars, including their children, are severely malnourished. “But wherever they have developed their own vegetable gardens, one can see a marked change not only in their health but also in their outlook. There is (now) a sense of hope. Otherwise, most Musahars you speak to would appear resigned to their fate,” says Nagvanshi. As a catalytic effect, the children have more enthusiasm to attend schools, according to her. “Another big impact is that Musahars who are self-employed this way have acquired more social respectability. There are cases where they distribute extra vegetables even to their high-caste villagers and Muslims. Otherwise, none of the latter would touch them. We discovered how even a small piece of useless land can bring about economic as well as social recovery,” explains Nagvanshi, who runs #PVCHR with husband Lenin Raghuvanshi. For those who haven’t seen the state of the Musahars, this may not sound a big deal unless they know that most Musahars have no job cards under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA), or even Aadhaar cards. And even for those who have the job cards, it mostly doesn’t get them any work. #ABPLIVE #ABPLIVEChannel #Musahar#Varanasi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrJlKbs0xyI
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