RCHSS

After the first decade of serving the tribal and other groups of the Barind region, RCHSS recognized the need for another focal shift as the population of this small region began to grow exponentially. This phenomenon was especially true for the families of the lowlands surrounding the river, where the average family could typically have 5 to 8 children. This family size usually represented an unbearable burden for families already in the throes of poverty and perpetuated a cycle of helplessness into future generations.

 

RCHSS provided intervention measures that focus on family welfare and education. Family planning models were introduced to the people for the first time. Programs were created to protect families from illnesses related to poor hygiene in densely populated villages. Sanitation was a very precarious situation, as often an entire village would exist without a single latrine, and there would be no distinction between water for washing and drinking. Children were growing up without the basic concepts of hygiene and, as a result, engaging in practices that would often put them at risk of serious diseases, such as never washing their hands with soap before eating. Through RCHSS programs, key ideas regarding hygiene and sanitation began to spread throughout the communities and remain in practice to this day.

 

Another difficulty stemming from the aforementioned issues of low yields from the introduction of foreign crops, coupled with increases in nuclear family size, was the emergence of the day laborer trend. Family farms were no longer producing the amount of crops required to turn a profit and fulfill the demands of food intake for all members of these large families, so many farmers were forced to turn to positions as day laborers to ensure a daily wage. However, in most cases, daily wages for this type of work were not livable. This resulted in many farmers losing their land and becoming even more dependent on external work availability. Until 2006, there were not enough employment opportunities to meet the growing number of day laborers and villagers had to seek job opportunities outside of their locality, often traveling as far as who Uttar Pradesh or Punjab for seasonal work. This process of seasonal migration was overseen by agents or “labor commissioners” whose unscrupulous tactics included taking sizable amounts of labor wages away from the workers, further increasing their property.

 

As a result, more family members in each household were forced to take on employment as migrational workers, and eventually, the median household income levels experienced incremental gains. Still, even with the slight increase in household income levels, families experienced a lack of ability to maintain many of life’s basic necessities and remained dissatisfied. The villagers also came to understand with a time that increased income did not always correlate with increased familial satisfaction. In the larger scope of their lives, there were still major issues present which created obstacles to their pursuit of communal well-being. Many of these issues stemmed from new changes in the environment, such as more extensive flooding, longer periods of drought, and increasing instability of precipitation patterns. Witnessing the subtle changes in daily life that resulted from environmental shifts, they became conscious of the fact that they were now living in a different agricultural era. Although these tribal people never had formal academic opportunities, they relied on their direct experience with nature to determine that these new phenomena were the result of human behavior. They took note of people coming into the region to construct embankments to prevent flooding, then saw how these same embankments compelled the riverbeds to raise and created unnatural stockpiles of sand and water that previously flowed over agricultural land, enhancing the fertility of the soil.

 

Another development on behalf of modern society that negatively impacted the land was the engineering of multiple concrete bridges over the river in a relatively short time span. These new bridges influenced the flow pattern of the river which led to its drying up in some areas. Yet another change implemented by humans that had dire results on the land was the introduction of chemical fertilizers and pesticides into the region’s agricultural system, with the hopes of increased yields. During the early phases of this practice which began during the 1960s, these chemical products did in fact result in increased crop production. However, this initial increase was short-lived and the early hikes in growth rate began to dwindle. Farmers responded by using more of these chemical fertilizers, but the consequence of this response was not the abundance they had expected, but rather the destruction of the delicate nature of the soil structure.

 

Simultaneously, the villagers noticed marine life in the local ponds and rivers dying in rapid numbers due to the contamination of water from pesticide runoff. Furthermore, they began to experience longer summers and extremely erratic precipitation patterns that could not be relied on for seasonal growth. After witnessing all of these changes over time, the people were compelled to consider how human influences have negatively impacted the delicate balance of the local ecological systems. They recognized the effects of this on human health as diseases they had never experienced before began to emerge in the community. Suddenly, a multitude of vector-borne diseases plagued the community as a result of the new agricultural practices and climate changes.

 

At that time, the focus of state leaders was mainly on the economic growth of the country and in turn, they appeared insensitive toward environmental sustainability. The attention was on the present moment. If the current population had adequate food there was no concern. The quality of life of future generations seemed irrelevant. This lack of so-called “civilized interest” in protecting the people's future led to widespread apathy amongst the tribal villagers. They began to feel hopeless as the environment became their enemy with its difficult, arid summers and harshly cold winters. Ultimately, all of these conditions led to mass confusion regarding life-sustaining securities that had been present in the past, such as adequate food supply and predictable environmental patterns. The tension and dissatisfaction of the community were rising and it became obvious in their interactions with one another. The sense of togetherness and strong social ties that had once been so prevalent among tribal members was no longer present. Affection was lacking in daily interactions. The people became less interdependent and more autonomous as the natural relationships that were once formed through their lighthearted nature began to disappear. The status of the society was changing for the worse, as rapidly as the physical world around them. With the negative effects of climate change, decreases in crop yields, and the absence of sustainable agricultural techniques, combined with a lack of skills to pursue alternate sources of livelihood, the future of the tribal and Indo-Mongol people of North Bengal was bleak.

 

These early challenges actually set the stage for over three decades of successful collaborations between RCHSS and nearly 1,000,000 people of the Malda and Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad (Darjeeling) villages. Through the diligence of the RCHSS team in mobilizing the people of this region, these challenges went from being a source of despair to one of inspiration, resilience, and the motivation to march boldly into a brighter future. All of the very early RCHSS initiatives used to combat the challenges that have been discussed up to this point were merely seedlings in the expansive, diverse forest that was to become the current RCHSS as we know it.