Adivasi Women's Perspectives on Food Security and Resource Rights

Samata, with the support of Catholic Relief Services,organized a two-day State level Consultation from October 4 and 5, 2007 at Jeevan Jyothi, Begumpet in Hyderabad on Adivasi Women's Perspectives on Food Security and Resource Rights for which more than 70 adivasi women from interior villages of north coastal Andhra Pradesh and more than 30 women and representatives of civil society organisations in other regions of Andhra Pradesh, came together. The Consultation was a result of a series of grassroots level consultations on how adivasi women perceive food security and how they define it.  Increasingly, the tribal region is going through a severe crisis of food, malnourishment and starvation as a result of several state induced factors.  While tribal people live in the midst of rich natural resources and produce diverse food crops, it is ironical that their right to food is threatened. That this perspective is shared by women from other rural areas reflects the wisdom and understanding that women across regions. Adivasi women’s assertion of right to food and food security as stated in the following declaration gives a clear voice to their demands on the policies and interventions required and portray the malaises in the state food programmes and the state perspective on food security. It is the government which has to come forward with courage in adopting these guidelines and demands.

Perspectives from the Adivasi Women

“The essence of life is land, air and water without which we cannot survive. The right to safe and secure living, therefore, means having the right to land, fresh air and water to drink and to cultivate”.

”We should first have the right to our land and right to cultivate our traditional crops”

“We want to protect our traditional seeds and do not want to be invaded by the spurious quality of seeds the government gives us” What kind of crops are they that we cannot keep some as seeds but have to buy from the trader again and again? We do not want such seeds.”. 

“In many of our areas government and private companies have made us stop growing our crops and forced us to grow cotton and tobacco.Many of us took loans to grow these cash crops and now we are in debt.  We neither have the money nor the food and we are forced to purchase food from the market.  We never had to do this before.  Our children are not as strong as we were at their age, as they have to eat this ‘poisoned’ food.”

“As important as our land is, so is our forest.  Killing our forests means killing our knowledge, not only from us but from all our future generations.  

So we ask the government not to touch our lands and our forests or to give them away to outsiders or companies.  We do not want the government to dig up our lands for mining projects or to submerge our villages for big dams.”

“The government can help us improve our lands, our forests, help us fight the exploitation of the traders and middle men, it can help us reduce our burden in grinding, pounding, processing by giving us machines to save women’s labour,  but the government should not take our lands away as our food security is dependent on our control of our lands.”

“Government should give us title deeds to our lands so that women have legal ownership of lands along with the men.”

These are statements made by adivasi women from a 100 hundred tribal villages and this is the essence of their perspective and vision for ensuring food security in their regions. Based on this perspective, they have laid down the following guidelines for the government for ensuring right to food and food security:

Adivasi Women’s Declaration on the right to food and food security

1.  The government should respect the constitutional and customary rights and safeguards of protecting our lands and resources.  The government should not make any attempts to amend the constitutional laws that protect us.

2. Our traditional agriculture and biodiversity are unique and rich in knowledge and provide us food security.  The government should declare the tribal region as an organic farming and traditional agriculture zone and come up with a special agriculture and land use policy for the tribal region.

3. The government should actively promote and strengthen  our traditional agriculture through

1. Investments, incentives in land development and organic cultivation leading to  the enhancement of agricultural growth of the tribal people.

2. Promotion certification and patenting of tribal knowledge and practices, providing good support price and providing markets for traditional cereals, millets and grains.

3. Investing in training and  processing of traditional agriculture and forest produce and provide proper channels of marketing.

4.  Government should not promote the agri-terrorism of the agri-based commercial industries who are exploiting the ignorance and illiteracy of our people.  Government should ban such entry of private commercial players and provide legislative safeguards and access to information for our people to protect our lands and livelihoods from being destroyed for the interests of global markets.

5. Government should regularize our lands and give us title deeds with joint ownership for adivasi women and men

6. The government should not take up non-agriculture or non-forestry activities like mining projects, in the name of our economic development.  In the name of adivasi development, the nature of development activities like mining and tourism projects are making our adivasi girls and women victims of trafficking and sexually transmitted diseases like HIV/AIDS.  While these do not ensure our food security, they are making our women vulnerable to new forms of exploitation.

7. Any development activity proposed to be undertaken by the government has to be placed before the Gram Sabhas and ensured that we adivasi women are active participants of these consultations. The United Nations Declaration of Indigenous People which lays down the obligations of the states to provide to us adivasi people the right to free, prior and informed consent, should be followed in its true spirit in our lands.

8. If the government is keen on providing additional food security in the form of food programmes, we demand that they be implemented properly in all our villages.  We demand that the supreme court guidelines to the government on the food programmes be implemented in the tribal areas. 

9. We demand that every tribal villages should have an Anganwadi, truly active and functioning.  

10. We demand that government should undertake the food and agriculture support programmes in such a manner that the tribal people do not continue to remain below poverty line but have proper incomes and food security all through the year.

11. The public distribution system in the tribal region is being made ineffective by reducing the number of D R Depots and by providing inadequate staff to ensure accessibility and regular functioning of these depots.  Government should have total responsibility of running these depots in a fair and qualitative manner and not adivasi women groups.

12. We demand that the government undertake a proper assessment of old age pension and schemes relevant to the elderly and ensure that these schemes are implemented in a proper manner.

13. Government should take immediate action to ensure that every tribal hamlet is provided a primary/alternate school and that the mid-day meal is provided as per the guidelines. 

14. The government should ensure that seasonal migration from our villages be stopped and proper employment guarantee be provided to ensure that village development activities as per our resources and needs are taken up while food security is provided to all our families.

Further, we, the adivasi women from our hundred villages declare that we will undertake a regular social audit of all the government programmes in our respective villages and submit our findings to our Gram Sabhas and to the concerned authorities and to the Supreme Court appointed Right to Food committee for Andhra Pradesh. We request for a dialogue with the government on the implementation of the above policies and programmes.