Ecological

Our strength as a group was also much emphasized this year by our need to re-articulate ourselves to the officials in Forestry, as you see here where all members are signing documents and receiving a translations.

The dog here is Jimmy.

ARUNACHALA KADU SIVA PLANTATION

As with all aspects of the enfringements of law which greatly hamper reforestation, by far the most powerful tool for overcoming the fires is the psychological involvement of the larger part of the population. The more people do not want to see their future go up in smoke, the more difficult it is for arsonists, for whatever reason, to light fires, as also for an arsonist escaping before anyone has the chance to prosecute. The more prosecutions of arsonists, the less inclined will be others. The endemic problem of the Law Enforcement Agents assisting law-breakers is something only defeatable by the will of the majority: the determined unwillingness of the most of the people not to further corruption. Corruption is a common social disease that conspicuously contributes towards the imbalance between standards of living between nations.

This meeting wasn't about making decisions by dialogue leading towards consensus as we have practised in the past, it was largely about an overview of ourselves as well as meta-level aspects beyond the capacity of most of us, like recent dealings with Forestry Department, and more optimistically with our relationship with Saranam - as you will learn in the section sacred historical.

Recently it has come to light that this small group of persons could not stand on their own feet on Reserve Forest in this culture because the powers above them would not listen to them. This is a shameful fact, a fatal flaw in fact in the face of India today. Nevertheless, it is a fact.

This year has presented facets of self-consciousness: firstly that while the agenda of the meeting above involved re-assessment of our original aims and intentions, it also contributed towards a sense of self-worth for us as a group because our own strengths were at this time compared with those of the Annamalai Reforestation Society. We are very glad to be ourselves; the two images below will suffice to convey an overall impression of this comparison without going into any details:

The socio-ecological aspect of this project was emphasized during the past months by the need to adjust our perspective to the capacities of our members. Although Pandian had forcefully volunteered to take on the management of the nursery, we realized that he was not able to undertake such responsibility yet. All our workers are illiterate or semi-literate rural persons and although we all hoped that responsibility for various aspects of the work could be allocated to most if not all of them, this is not a just expectation yet. What is required is the upliftment that follows from the experience of training externally. As is articulated in the section urgent tasks, it would be enormously beneficial for the core members to go away from their home district and train with other persons involved in ecological restoration from other parts of the country. This is one aspect of the change in perspective now possible for us.

We had a meeting, on a rock, in which for the first time we had the Agenda read out to all, and printed as well in Tamil for those who can read. We have never done this before, having shied away from our illiteracy, but we're becoming confrontative about this now: Kasi is giving lessons to those who have no skills in the Tamil alphabet.

With funding and supervisor capacity we could forest the entire mountain within a good season. Yet this work could easily be destroyed in one summer night by the ubiquitous fires which have blackened the hill entirely until now. The present green film is unseasonal; dry summers will certainly continue to turn the forest into tinder on the mountain and flatland wilderness surrounding Arunachala. This means that the only possible avenue for sustainability lies with the psychological investment of a large number of persons within the community. The social cannot be separated from the ecological.

One image conveying the advent of a new self-consciousness is on the right here. We had been surveying the potential terrain in the delta region; I said that a photo of their intentions to create the water catchment area this place deserves would be useful for the website. Flamboyantly they knew just what to do. This is new.