The Bamboo Economics

Considered poorest of the poor, the nomadic Pardhi adivasi community in Bastar practices a customary economics that, if not shocking, compels a re-think. Without a settled home and hearth, their abode remains under trees. While men are excellent hunters, women craft fish and bird traps, baskets, several trinkets and oddities from bamboo. Products are sold in weekly village markets called haats.

In one of the hamlets in Bastar, a little off Dudhava-Narharpur road, I was observing a young Pardhi woman weaving a basket. There was certain aloofness about her, bordering on a certain impressive strength if not disdain. Absorbed in her work, she reflected a tentativeness and quiet dignity so characteristic of the adivasis. Small heaps of bamboo shears, strips of different widths, lengths and thickness lay around; the only tools being a pair of old, rusted knives.

During the course of our conversation she mentioned the basket she was weaving would fetch her eleven rupees at the haat. Trying to figure out the profit, I inquired: ‘How much does it cost to make this basket?'

‘Twelve'.

Perplexed, I asked her to repeat. She did.

'It fetches you a rupee less than the cost?'

'Yes'.

'How many baskets do you make in a year?'

'Who knows? But several'.

'For how long have you been weaving baskets?'

'I learnt it from my mother when I was a little girl. Ever since.'

'But why do you do this?'

"Because this is the only thing I know; and one must do something. Doing what you can is Purusharth".*

This conversation could not have lasted longer.

Why do people do things that entail a predictable economic loss, year after year? Or, is economy more than mere profit and loss? What about the issue of Purusharth* in economy? Of human dignity, resilience, the sense of doing something meaningful for oneself and beyond?

Her preoccupation contrasts with the omnipresence of gainful work in the world at large. Though a ‘bad' economic investment, for her it was an intrinsically meaningful preoccupation; just like nature too, for her, is intrinsically meaningful.

She lives in the continuum of things she learnt as a little girl from her mother. Therein lie the pristine rhythms of Bastar.

Narendra

DoE Bastar

India

Email: snaren00@gmail.com

*Self-worth, Valour, Natural Law, Dharma