Adivasi Farmers in West Bengal

by Ruth Zimmerman

“Do you have Adivasis where you come from?” the Adivasi farmer in rural West Bengal asked when I was introduced as a former farm girl from the United States. Adivasis are the tribal or original inhabitants of India. I was visiting their community as the director of the MCC India program to see the results of our four year project for food security and livelihood promotion.

Adivasis have suffered much in India like tribal people have in many other parts of the world. As newcomers arrived, they were pushed to more marginal, highland areas where life has been extremely difficult. I responded to the man’s question, “Yes we also have tribal people. They have lost many of their lands to foreign settlers and have suffered much.” He nodded his head in sympathy. He knew what that was like.

I visited the fields of these marginal farmers and could see flourishing fields of tomatoes, eggplants, lentils, cauliflower and giant green beans that benefited from the new water sources, such as a recently built check-dam, provided by MCC. Community members shared how the vermiculture and composting methods they learned loosened the formally hard packed soil. They proudly showed us the compost with lively worms that enriched the soil and was the reason for the healthy vegetation. Commercial fertilizers or pesticides are not needed.

Staff, from MCC partner agency ISARA, told of the many changes brought about by their work over these years. At one time the daily diet consisted mostly of rice with very limited amounts of corn and lentils. There was only one growing season during the monsoon rains. After the monsoon they often had to survive on one meal of rice or corn a day. Many would be at the edge of starvation. Drought years, when the monsoon rains failed, were doubly difficult and drove them into egregious debt to high priced money lenders.

Simple water harvesting technology has made it possible to introduce vegetables as a second crop after the monsoon season and (if water is sufficient) even a third crop. They not only have nutritious vegetables to add to the daily rice and lentils but they are able to raise enough to sell to others in the local markets. In addition they can sell worms from their vermiculture project.

The villagers smiled brightly while telling us how they no longer have to borrow from the money lenders and their children are now going to school. Migration to other areas of India for work during the dry season has also been much reduced.

ISARA helps form farmers groups and women’s self-help groups. The groups are now able to confidently access government banks for loans at much reduced rates and also take advantage of other government programs that have recently been introduced. In addition ISARA staff noted that to the incidence of deadly malaria seems much reduced in the villages that introduced vegetables into their diets.

Flood Relief in Andhra Pradesh

Disasters bring out the best and the worst in us.

MCC India was discussing how we might do drought relief work in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The Indian government was calling it the worst drought in 40 years. Then unprecedented torrential rains lashed the region for more than a week, causing massive flooding. Within living memory, such heavy rain had never been experienced before in this commonly drought affected part of India.

The Indian government was able to give an early warning to low-lying towns and villages, else there would have been many more than the reported 226 deaths in the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Millions were forced to evacuate and hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed. Many of these families are still living in refugee camps.

The floods struck immediately before Ruth and I went to Indonesia for our semi-annual Asia Leadership Team meetings. From there we were in touch with both MCC disaster response people in North America and our MCC India staff in Kolkata. An earthquake had hit Sumatra, Indonesia at the same time and a cyclone had struck the Philippines and Vietnam a little earlier. MCC put out an appeal for these Asia disasters and we spent time, outside of our regular meetings in Indonesia, helping to coordinate this effort.

MCC India was able to secure $475,000 for flood relief from the Canadian Food Grains Bank. This is being managed through the Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action, the relief and development arm of 24 Protestant and Orthodox churches in India. We were able to secure another $40,000 through the Asia disaster relief appeal to be distributed in the Mahabubnagar District of Andhra Pradesh through the Mennonite Christian Service Fellowship of India (MSCFI).

Several Mennonite Brethren congregations are located in the flooded towns and villages in Mahabubnagar. MCSFI targeted this area for its relief effort in coordination with three small Mennonite Brethren related relief and development organizations. MCC India staff was also directly involved in managing the effort. We distributed 10 kilos of rice, 1 kilo of lentils, and one blanket to a total of 4,115 families.

Disaster situations bring out the best and the worst in people. Many want to help but coordinated effort is difficult. Volunteers such as the students at the Mennonite Brethren Bible College brought what little they had and helped clean mud out of houses. People from the nearby city of Hyderabad donated clothes. On the negative side, many of these used clothes were unfit to wear and most villagers refused to accept them. The clothes were lying there in huge piles that a few desperate people were picking through.

When a disaster happens, our MCC India office is flooded with appeals from local agencies that want to deliver relief aid. One of the most difficult tasks is determining which agencies are reputable and have the capacity to deliver the aid. Delivering relief is a business and many want in on the action. Getting aid to the neediest people is not an easy task. Surveys need to be taken and lists of beneficiaries must be drawn up.

The distribution itself must be well organized to make sure the relief goes to the people it’s intended for. Fights easily break out as others try to get some of the supplies. Sometimes whole truck loads of relief supplies are broken into. At one aid distribution point this week things almost got out of control because of the number of desperate people and a lack of careful planning by the people in charge of the distribution center.

I have mixed feelings about relief aid. I’d rather give a hand-up than a handout. Yet relief can make a huge difference after a disaster. The Indian military provided much needed early rescue and relief efforts that nobody else could provide. Other NGOs provided additionally needed initial food and shelter.

MCC India is not a “first responder.” We need several weeks to choose local partners, purchase supplies, conduct surveys to develop a list of beneficiaries, and finally deliver the aid. This, however, fills an important role after initial relief efforts have ended. People have lost everything and their crops have often been wiped out for the entire growing season.

What we are able to provide is so little compared to the need after a disaster like the flood in Andhra Pradesh. Yet it is something that is much appreciated. I saw one little boy, no more than ten years old, leave the distribution center with his family’s relief supplies, cheeks wet with tears. His load was almost more than he could carry. Helping that little boy is what good disaster relief is all about.

Peacebuilding in Orissa

The first photo is of me and the Orissa Minister of School and Mass Education flagging off the peace march. The second is of the march being led by a police officer, the third is of street children from the SNEH shelter-home performing a peacebuilding drama. The last is of a university student performing a traditional dance.


The Society for Nature, Education, and Health (SNEH), an MCC partner organization, inaugurated their Centre for Peace and Non-violence on World Peace Day, August 21, 2009. Thomas Harris, an MCC India project officer, and I took the overnight train to Bhubaneswar, Orissa to represent MCC at this significant milestone in our peacebuilding programming in Orissa.

Along with their other rural development and health programs, SNEH has been providing peacebuilding and conflict mediation skills to students in several high schools in Bhubaneswar. They also have a shelter-home and study center for street children in Saliasahi, a huge slum in Bhubaneswar. The newly inaugurated Centre for Peace and Non-violence is their response to the recent interfaith violence between Christians and Hindus in Orissa.

The World Peace Day inaugural program began with a three-kilometer peace march, guided by Gandhians, which included more than 300 students from various universities in the city. The peace march was followed by the inauguration ceremony at the newly constructed SNEH office building that will also house the Centre for Peace and Nonviolence.

Various local politicians and academic leaders spoke at the event which was covered by local television and newspapers. I gave a brief address on behalf of MCC India. The children from the SNEH shelter-home performed a drama on interfaith conflict that was resolved through dialogue and organizing a community peace committee. This was followed by a cultural dance and a linguistic drama, representing diversity and unity in India, performed by university students.

The Centre for Peace and Non-violence will be a place for study and research as well as peacebuilding activities and non-violent community action. A network of civil society organizations working for communal harmony is being formed. Upcoming activities in Kandhamal District, where interfaith violence erupted last year, include two conflict mediation trainings, a peace rally, and a peacebuilding competition for students.

Country Evaluations

The first photo is of students at the School of Shanti in Nepal, the second is of a tailor in Kathmandu, the third is of Charlotte and Micah in Itahari,and the fourth is of evaluators talking with vocational education alumni in Kolkata.






























During much of the past month, Ruth and I have been busy with country evaluations in India and Nepal. The actual evaluation began when the team of four evaluators arrived at our MCC India office. The preliminary work had begun several months earlier as we and our staff assembled relevant documents, chose people to be interviewed, made travel arrangements, and developed key questions about the region and the work of MCC.

The goals were to both access our efforts during the past five years and to help set our strategic direction. I traveled in India with two members of the evaluation team that visited Mennonite Brethren churches and programs as well as the Henry Martyn Institute (HMI), a long-standing peacebuilding partner in South India. Dan Shetler, an MCC service worker at HMI, joined us in these conversations. The other two evaluation team members visited community development and education partners.

There was lots of affirmation for the work of MCC in India through the years. The evaluation team encouraged us to stay creative and proactive in out work. Such observations were framed as the challenge of moving from “good” to “better.” There is a sense that change is in the air as MCC repositions itself as a relief, development, and peacebuilding ministry of the global Anabaptist family of churches. We seek to envision what such change may include in our region as well as the new opportunities it may offer.

There were many encouraging conversations. One was when the HMI staff encouraged MCC to embrace our Mennonite heritage because this is our unique contribution to the field of peacebuilding. Another was a conversation with about twenty young adult alumni of our Global Family vocational education scholarship program in Kolkata. Each had a personal story of struggle to finance their education and eventually being able to help support their families as they completed their schooling and got jobs. I was especially impressed by the way our Global Family staff had built warm, nurturing relationships with these students.

We then traveled to Nepal with two members of the evaluation team to engage in a similar but smaller scale process there. Ruth and I also took this opportunity to visit various project partners and service workers in Nepal. We traveled to Itahari, a hot little town near the Indian border, to visit Charlotte and Micah Shristi who have recently begun their assignments there with United Mission to Nepal (UMN).

Charlotte is a peacebuilding advisor and Micah is an appropriate technology advisor for their UMN project cluster. We were impressed by how quickly they had made Itahari their home and were already involved in some exciting projects including cross-border violence and building a solar drier.

MCC is in the process of being registered as an international relief and development agency in Nepal. Amos and Heidi Stoltzfus, MCC service workers in Kathmandu, Nepal briefed us on these developments and other matters related to our work there.

We slipped in a quick visit to the School of Shanti, an innovative peace-training program, on the morning before we returned to Kolkata. Sixteen staff members of various grass-roots organizations from all over Nepal were gathered for a two-week training before beginning a two-month practicum with their organization. This training-practicum cycle is repeated three times throughout the one-year course. The interactive energy in the room as they engaged the topic of identity and violence was very encouraging.

Crossing Divided Bengal

Scenes from the Bengal countryside


Ruth and I recently traveled to Bangladesh with a group of eighteen MCC India staff and project partners to participate in a workshop on development planning, monitoring, and evaluation. We traveled to the border by bus and were picked up on the other side by MCC Bangladesh staff. Our route took us through much of what had been Bengal before it was partitioned when colonial India achieved its independence from Britain.

I was especially eager to make this overland trip because of my interest in the beginning of MCC service in India in 1942. MCC first arrived in response to the Bengal famine that killed as many as 3 million people between 1943 and 1944. At one point MCC was supporting 8,000 starving people through disaster relief.

The famine was followed be the partition of Bengal along religions lines at the end of British colonial rule in 1947. Predominantly Hindu West Bengal became part of India. Predominantly Muslim East Bengal became East Pakistan, and then Bangladesh after the war for independence from Pakistan in 1971.

After the partition, thousands of Hindu refugees from East Bengal were camped out several blocks away from the MCC office in Kolkata. They had nowhere to go but the city eventually absorbed them. More arrived during the Bangladesh war for independence in 1971. Still more continue to come from poor villages in West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Bangladesh. MCC has been helping these immigrants in various ways for many years—especially through educational scholarships for their children.

Crossing the guarded border between India and Bangladesh was a two hour ordeal of checking and rechecking documents in oppressive heat. We were soon drenched in sweat as we waited in front of immigration counters. The Indians in our group were worried that immigration officers would find some minor mistake in their papers and use it as an excuse to demand a “facilitation fee.” There were no major hitches and we were eventually on our way.

Both sides of the border are part of the vast fertile delta created be the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. People on both sides are ethnically Bengali and speak the same language. They share literary and culinary traditions. Both revere Tagore as their world renowned Bengali poet. Both absolutely love hilsa fish.

So why does an ugly, guarded border run through the middle of their homeland? One reason is religious. In the twelfth century, Muslim traders and missionaries spread Islam throughout the Bengal region that has more ancient Hindu and Buddhist roots. These religious identities became tied to the imperial ambitions of the Muslim Mughal Empire in India and then the British Empire. That sordid story cannot be told here but a toxic mix of religion and nationalism eventually led to the partition in 1947.

Culturally and economically, the border makes absolutely no sense. And it makes little religious sense because many Muslims and Hindus still live on both sides. So why do people just accept this ugly border as an unquestioned part of their world? Why do our nationalist and religious imaginations create such divides? Why is it so easy to distrust and fear those who live on the other side of the borders we have created?

What will it take for us to imagine differently? What religious and political traditions can inspire efforts to gradually dismantle our walls? Our decision to drive to the border and walk across, rather than fly across, was one little effort in creating a different world. Our workshop in Bangladesh involved Indians, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Americans, and Canadians working together to enhance our community development practices. Another little piece of our national divides dissolved during our time together.

When enough of us start doing such things we will eventually realize how dysfunctional the border dividing Bengal—indeed all national borders—really are. Such growing awareness is one indication of the coming reign of God.

Our Global Family Visit to Darjeeling

The first two photos are of a woman carrying a load of produce to sell and of the home of one of the students that MCC helps to support. The student's grandfather is standing by the door.












These four photos are of students at the Nepali Girls' Social Service Centre schools and daycare centers. Ruth and Ayesha are walking with the students in one photo.















































The above photos show the tea gardens, Ruth enjoying a cup of tea, the famous toy train, and a common flower arrangement. People in Darjeeling love their flowers.


Darjeeling is a town in the clouds surrounded by beautiful natural scenery. This former British hill station is 6,500 feet above sea level. Early this morning, I sat on the roof terrace of our simple hotel and watched the mist waft up the mountainsides covered with tea plantations. I got a glimpse of the Himalayan snow caps through a brief break in the clouds. I then walked back down to the dining room and ordered a set of delicious, world famous Darjeeling tea. But not all is idyllic in this hill station.

Ruth and I are here on an MCC Global Family program visit. Ayesha Kadar, the coordinator of the Global Family Program in India, has thoughtfully planned our visit during this time of year to give us a brief respite from the severe heat of Kolkata and the plains of India. Our visit quickly orients us to the raw social needs that lie immediately beneath the veneer of cool weather and beautiful scenery in Darjeeling.

The Nepali Girls’ Social Service Centre, supported by MCC, provides educational assistance to students from poor families, it has an open education program that helps high school dropouts complete their degrees, and it has three preschool daycare centers. They also provide basic healthcare education and small livelihood projects in communities where they have educational programs.

Our first day of visits focused on the daycare centers and families of students in nearby villages. They are tea plantation or rural agricultural laborers who earn about two dollars a day when they have work. Many have migrated here from regions of Nepal affected by the recent civil war in their county. The culture of Darjeeling is actually much closer to that of Nepal and Bhutan than the plains of India.

Students in the village of Aloobari performed a traditional Nepalese dance for us. Akriti Thami, one of the dancers, and her two siblings are the first in their family to go to school. A village woman with a tenth grade education helps at an after school study center, which was started by the Nepali Girls’ Social Service Centre. It is a resource for students whose illiterate parents are not able to help them do their homework.

On the second day we visited the homes of students in the town of Darjeeling. We climbed steep, narrow alleys and foot paths that cross open sewers and skirt piles of garbage thrown over the sides of embankments. Sapna Chhetri, a high school student, lives with her mother and brother. They support themselves by selling vegetables along the side of the road and doing domestic labor. Sapna dreams of going to college after completing high school. Ayesha Kadar, our Global Family coordinator, gives encouragement and practical advice as we sit in their tiny one-room space that is little more than a place to sleep and to stay dry when it rains.

Many girls drop out of school in their early teens to get married. Various children at the daycare centers are from such marriages. The fathers have abandoned their families. The young mothers take turns volunteering at the center by preparing a simple lunch for the children and doing other chores. A goal of the daycare center is to give the children a head start so they can do well when they enter the local primary school.

MCC helps support seventy students and their families through the Nepali Girl’s Social Service Centre. I’m grateful to not be an ordinary tourist as I walk the streets of Darjeeling where I’m constantly accosted by shopkeepers eager to make a sale or beggars asking for a handout. I am part of something more substantial that makes a significant difference in the lives of needy people in a way that gives them dignity and hope.

It’s a privilege to be part of a faith community whose social conscience and generosity supports this ministry. I try to weave this social service into the fabric of our Mennonite tradition of peace with justice. The proprietor of the hotel were we are staying is an older Tibetan woman, a follower of the Dalai Lama, who fled her homeland in the 1950s and started a new life in Darjeeling. She welcomes our presence because she appreciates what we’re doing for the community.

Ruth and I were talking with our Tibetan hostess on the terrace of the hotel early one morning. Part of the skyline is dominated by a huge building recently erected by a powerful local politician with an apparent edifice complex. (The purpose of the building, constructed on a former children’s playground, remains unclear.) A huge statue of a Gorkha soldier, gun in one hand and knife in the other, is astride a globe on the roof of the building.

Gorkhas from Nepal were recruited as soldiers by the British during the heyday of the British Empire and had reputations as fierce fighters. Other Gorkhas were recruited as tea pickers and laborers by the British East India Company after the king of Sikkim ceded Darjeeling to the Company in 1817. The Company began to plant tea on these slopes in its effort to wrest the tea trade away from China.

Our Tibetan hostess is clearly offended by the statue of a Gorkha soldier astride the world. She asks, “What presumption allows us to imagine such a thing?” I feel the pain of history in this region of the world. I also feel a kindred spirit with this Tibetan woman who had to flee her homeland as a young girl. My Anabaptist faith tradition, born in a sixteenth century history of religious suffering, gives me similar social sensitivities.

Flowers and Cemeteries

The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever (Isaiah 40:8).

The past several months have been very stressful. MCC has not been immune from the global economic crisis. Last fall we were told that we should plan for a flat budget in 2009 but it soon became clear that we actually needed to make significant cuts. In the end we cut to our core budget in India by 15% and we also had to make substantial budget cuts in Nepal and Afghanistan.

On top of that, Ruth ran into a bureaucratic snafu during a routine visa renewal and had to make a quick trip back to the United States to get a new visa. It threw her work schedule completely out of whack during a very busy time. We all pitched in to help and she returned two weeks later with a new visa. One silver lining in the fiasco was that she was able to attend the one year birthday party for our grand-twins when she was home.

The fact that I didn’t write a blog post during the past several months is an indicator of how crazy our lives have been. I didn’t feel inspired to write even when I did have a little extra time. I hope the somewhat morbid topic of this post isn’t an indicator of lingering trauma. It actually draws on a thoroughly delightful Sunday spent with or friends Carolyn and Richard Heggen when they were in Kolkata following a Tsunami relief workshop.

Our day began at a flower show at the horticultural garden in Kolkata. It was an oasis of beauty and tranquility that refreshed our spirits in this overgrown and polluted city. There’s something about the ephemeral nature of flowers that adds to their beauty. They have such a fragile existence. I want to reflect more deeply on the way the prophet Isaiah related the fleeting life of grass and flowers to the eternal word of God.

After spending the morning at the flower show we grabbed a late lunch and decided to walk back to our apartment. That’s when we poked our heads into the old British Cemetery on South Park Street. The cemetery was opened in 1767 and the last tombs were erected around 1830. The first thing that impressed us was the huge size of most of the tombs. The next was how young most of the people were who are buried here. It’s as though the tombs they built were a way to reassure themselves that they had indeed lived.

Many had some connection with the British East India Company. Quite a few died in their twenties and thirties in tragic circumstances involving sickness, war, and mishaps on the sea. I couldn’t help wondering about the push and pull factors that had drawn them so far away from their native land.

One tomb that especially stood out was that of Elizabeth Jane Barwell who died in 1776 (the year of American independence) when she was only twenty-three years old. Her husband was a council member of the East India Company. I wonder about her social background in England. Was coming to India a way to escape poverty and find a new social position? Was she an adventurer who wanted to see the world? Was she able to adapt to her new home or was she terribly lonely and homesick during her brief time here?

Another striking reality is that this once grand cemetery had recently been completely run down and overgrown with vegetation. It served as a shelter for homeless people and a hideout for robbers who lived in the tombs for several decades after Indian independence in 1947. No one, not even the British, had much interest in maintaining it. It has since been cleaned up and partially restored but still needs lots of work. It feels like a dilapidated relic of a bygone era and perhaps that’s how it should be.

Visiting the British cemetery could lead one to despair over the futility of life and all our efforts. Like the writer of Ecclesiastes, one could conclude that all is vanity. But it doesn’t affect me in that way. I actually find hope in the realization that life is short. It gives me less interest in the turf battles we’re continually fighting. It gives me added perspective on our notions that the things we’re engaged in right now are absolutely crucial. And it gives me a desire to be more deeply rooted in the eternal wisdom of God. My prayer is that such rootedness will give me greater ability to free myself from the petty obsessions that often rule our efforts and relationships. I find serenity in thinking of my life as a fragile flower connected to the eternal word of God.