Hoshangabad - 'Covering Deprivation'

15 Jan 2011

Conflicts with officialdom, especially the forest department is the common thread in the livesof most people in Hoshangabad, whether it be tribals who’re denied access to forests, farmers prevented from building small scale irrigation projects or potters denied permission to collect firewood for their needs from the forest.

Potters of Shahpur

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Shahpur, Betul District, Madhya Pradesh:  Babli Prajapathi hopes none of her children will have to make earthern ware for a living. She spends her day making clay ‘Chappathi tawas’ which she sells to dealers from Bhopal and Indore who buy it from her for four rupees a piece, then sell it in the market for ten rupees each. When the rains come and she can no longer work with clay in the open, she makes end meet by doing wage labour either in NREGA projects or others. A widow, she lives with her aged father and extended family in the potter’s colony that lines the highway in Shahpur in Betul district of Madhyapradesh.  Two hundred-odd families of the Kummar caste, live in this colony; all engaged in the making of different kinds of earthern ware as well as bricks for their livelihood.  The men , women and children all engage in the work; women mixing clay, painting and polishing pots or making smaller articles while men mould the bogger pots. Their lives have become harder in the recent years with the declaration of surrounding areas which they depend on for firewood, an essential raw material for the trade, as reserve forest.

As they have been told by forest officials not to enter the nearby forests to collect firewood, the potter  families most of whom cannot afford to buy firewood from other sources, resort to sneaking into the forest late at night to escape the eyes of forest department officials. “Wednesday is market day when dealers come to buy our ware,” says Saraswathi Prajapthi one of the potters in the colony. “On Tuesday we have to set up the furnace to heat the pots, for which we need wood”. And hence, over the weekend and Monday, families set out in bullock carts at two or three AM in the morning to collect firewood from the forest. They return in the morning, only to be intercepted on their way out of the forest by officials. Once caught, bribing is the only way out. Sixty to Seventy is the going rate to transport  one cartload of fire wood out of the forest.  The Kummars have now formed a small organisation comprising prominent members of the community and have submitted a memorandum to the District collector and ministers of the State cabinet in December 2010 demanding that they be allowed to collect forest produce that they desperately need to continue their trade.

None of the families possess much land, and are thus unable to build sheds to store the pots which are arranged in front of their dwellings, out in the open. The local Tahsildar’s office views this as encroachment and has routinely slapped eviction notices and charged fines of hundred rupees when it goes on an anti-‘encroachment’ drive.

Only a few families in the colony make bricks, which is a more expensive process and requires land. It is made harder as officials including the Tahsildar have to be bribed to pattain permits for the same. “Kummars were always allowed to set up furnaces without applying for permits,” said Madan Prajapthi. “Now we have to pay to pay a minimum of Rs. 5000 to set up one furnace. For five furnaces set up on an acre of rented land, I had to pay 10,000 Rupees”. He rents land at a price of Rs.20,000 for eight months.

Pottery work can only be done for eight months due to rains which make it impossible for four months. Whatever little saving they make from eight months of work is used to live through four months of no work. A few men and women who can find work do daily wage labour. Unemployment is high in the district and mostly only NREGA work is available.

Most of the children go to school. Saraswathi Prajapathi was adamant her son should not take up pottery. He goes to college in Betul and she hopes he will find some other work . But for most families pottery is the only option. Pappu Prajapthi whose family makes pots that range from five to 60 rupees in retail price is training his children in the ancestral work. “They go to school but there are hardly any other jobs available so they will also take up this trade. It is a family business” he says.