Sample 1: CHIEF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY – AGRICULTURE:

As we already saw, the chief economic activity of the people of Kolathupalayam and Kolanalli is agriculture. Once we understood that agriculture is the chief economic activity, we went to office of agriculture in Kodumudi union to get the necessary details. According to the agriculture office, 5 chief crops of kodimudi are 1. Turmeric (Manjal) 2. Sugarcane 3. Tapioca (Maravalli kilangu) 4. Banana 5. Paddy. There are 2 canals, whose water is majorly used for irrigation. One is Kalingarayan canal and the other one is canal from Bavani sagar dam.

Almost all the people earn their livelihood from agriculture in one way or other. When we interacted with the people we understood that most of the upper caste people invariably owned some land and the land labourers were of mostly dalits. But we have to say that even among upper castes there were poor land labourers.

The striking feature of kolathupalayam and Kolanalli gram panchayat were that we can easily feel stratification (class based) rather than hierarchy (caste based) in the society. The corresponding class consciousness can also be easily felt in the society.

We met the Assistant agricultural officer and enquired about the latest technologies introduced into the farming. Our questions where mainly focused on; what were the new technologies that was inducted in the region by the board? what are the schemes to support it? what is the mechanism for induction and feedback? and what was the overall reception among the public?

We found from the officer that some technologies like drip irrigation, new techniques like tissue culture in banana, have been given subsidies by the govt. to make the farmers use them. Especially for using drip irrigation, in case of small peasants 75% subsidies are given and for big farmers 65% subsidies are given. Many agents were recruited to spread the benefits of the new technologies and techniques to the peasants and farmers. Many farmers meeting are conducted, field demonstrations, university tours are arranged to spread the new ideas. At the same time, the officers of the Kodumudi agricultural office also attend workshops with scientists every 2 months to get updated and trained in new technologies and practices, so that they could teach the same to farmers under their Jurisdiction. According to the officer, the board is functioning well and most people welcome the technologies and techniques introduced by the office.

But when we met the farmers we got a slightly different picture. Farmers say many techniques do not work in their field and they are skeptical in using them. They feel that traditional practices yielded them more results than the new ones. They also blame the officer for their lack of timing in introduction of new techniques. They blame by saying that during the time of weeding the officers come with techniques of harvesting and vice-versa, which are not useful. Few young peasants admit that even though the new techniques are truly advantageous, it is hard to convince their parents to use it as their parents generally don’t believe in govt. officials!