Displaced from Bihar in 1980, a group of 42 Munda families have collectively established the organic village in Odisha
The fortunes of the 42 families in Odisha’s Rantal village changed after they collectively moved to organic farming in 2018 (Photograph: Priya Ranjan Sahu) “We were forced to migrate with our families to work as farm labourers in Odisha in 1980, after the Bihar government took over our forests for mining and developmental projects. Today, we are a thriving organic village,” says 70-year-old Dasa Barla of Rantal village, situated in the buffer area of Jujumura forests in Odisha’s Sambalpur district.
The 42 families in Rantal, belonging to the Munda tribe of Jharkhand (carved out of Bihar in 2000), now live in a picturesque setting—greenery all around, clean roads, well-maintained open wells, along with four water harvesting structures and two solar-powered drinking water supply systems.
Every household has a kitchen garden with fruit trees. The residents practice organic farming, goat rearing and poultry. “This was unimaginable four decades ago when we came to Rantal,” says Rezina Kandulana. She says that without basic amenities such as drinking water and electricity, surviving in the Jujumura forest in the 1980s was not easy. “While toiling in the fields of farmers in neighbouring villages, we began cultivating millets and vegetables in small patches of forestland during the rainy season, supplementing our sustenance with minor forest produce,” says Rezina, recalling that the residents used to travel over 3 km each day to collect drinking water.
The transformation started in 2009, when the residents approached the district administration to seek land rights over nearby agricultural lands. Their petition initially got lost in the administrative maze. “We were trying to change our fortunes by becoming farmers from farm labourers but needed land rights as the administration would regularly deem our farms illegal and arrest us,” says James Kandulana, an elderly resident from the village.
In 2012, the residents, along with help from Odisha-based non-profit Patang, applied for individual land rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, commonly known as the Forest Rights Act. After a protracted struggle of four years, in 2016, all the families were awarded rights over their homestead and roughly 2 hectares of land for farming.
“While we were traditionally growing pulses and vegetables without any pesticides for household consumption, we relied on the state government for paddy seeds that required chemical fertilisers to grow,” says Pramila Tappo from the village.
In 2018, the residents decided to go completely organic. They approached the transition through two steps: undertaking training on organic farming from Patang and utilising the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to create common structures that support organic farming. “During the training, we learnt how to prepare organic pesticides using medicinal leaves like neem, cow urine and dung,” says Tappo. In the same year, the residents brought indigenous paddy seeds from the nearby Nuapada district and planted them in their fields and formed a seed bank, which now has 25 indigenous paddy varieties sourced from different parts of the state. The paddy varieties in the bank, say Rantal residents, are water efficient and more resilient than the hybrid varieties used in the area.
Using MGNREGS, the village created open wells, pooled in labour to prepare individual croplands and built artificial ponds and katas (large water structures) where they practice collective fishing. They have also used the scheme to create at least 20 vermicompost pits to produce organic manure and pesticide for their crops and planted thousands of jackfruit, guava, mango, custard apple, pomegranate and other varieties of fruit trees in the common areas of the village.
They have built village roads and even a hockey stadium that is lined with mango trees sourced from the horticulture department. The village now organises an annual hockey competition that sees participation from over 45 neighbouring villages and has become a major income source for the community.
“The money from the hockey tournament, along with the income generated from community assets like fruit trees, ponds and collective fishing, is kept in a community fund. The money is spent on the development of the village and also used to provide assistance to any family facing health crisis,” says Ajay Dang, a Rantal resident and the naib sarpanch of Meghpal gram panchayat.
Riding on the success, Rantal residents have helped other Sambalpur villages such as Magangbahal, Jarang and Taljhora to take up organic farming. “We encourage farmers from other villages to create their own seed banks because they need control over seeds to become organic,” says Dang. “From being uprooted in 1980, organic farming has given us a collective identity today,” he adds.
This was first published in the 1-15 February, 2024 print edition of Down To Earth
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