CUMINUM CYMINUM
Ramesh Sindhav is busy in his workshop at Hansalpur, a village in Gujarat that produces the finest cumin in the country. All of the cumin is traded at Unjha, a town known for Asia’s biggest cuming market. Armed with a soldering iron, Sindhav is creating a trespasser warning system through a maze of electronic circuitry which would protect his cousin’s cumin fields. While demonstrating his device to his relatives and some local farmers including his cousin, Kapil, Sindhav explains that when a stray buffalo or a goat would try to cross the field, a sensor would detect its movement and a text message would be sent to his cousin’s cellular phone. To ward off the stray cattle from the boundaries, Ramesh says, the sensor will also generate a low frequency electric shock. After explaining, Ramesh realizes the confusion amidst the audience and quickly adds, “The pastures will have industries now, so obviously the cattle would stray.”
Kapil, who recently returned from Zimbabwe after working as a forest guide in a sanctuary, is thrilled with his younger cousin’s innovation. “We used to do this to wild animals back in Zimbabwe but now we will have to do this to our own,” says Kapil after that initial excitement over the device. Kapil could not ignore threat of the device that could sour their relationship with the pastoralist community, the Maldhari grazier.
Recently, the Gujarat government in its bid to increase capital investment in the state announced that about 50,000 hectares of land from 26 villages would be acquired for a special investment region, which in future would be a hub of automotive parts. When Kapil and around 10,000 farmers and grazers from these villages reached Gandhinagar, the state capital, with their tractors, a government minister admonished them for refusing land deals for their farm land. Even the local supporters of the government chose to stand on the side of the farmers. Later, the government decided to shrink the size of the investment zone by the end of 2013.
While cumin farming may have been saved to a great extent due to the protests, the pastoralists have not been spared. “Earlier, cattle never entered fields. We would not lead them to someone’s fields. But if the pastures go, then we all will have to find ways ward off cattle from cumin farms,” says Jethabhai, a grazer attending Ramesh’s demonstration.
SEASONED 