The possibilities of bamboo
Sujit Sinha and Nazrul Haque
Gandhiji’s beloved charkha was made of bamboo. This article outlines the possibility of using bamboo as one of the themes for school education in rural areas to go with Gandhi’s vision of self-sufficient, self-governing village communities.
Mendha (Lekha) is a small village in Maharashtra where all community related decisions are unanimously taken by the gram sabha. This is an outstanding example where 105 families are negotiating and balancing between the two streams of ‘governance’: representative government in Delhi/Mumbai and participatory in their village. Here decisions are not taken by a majority but by consensus in the gram sabha (every adult villager is a member of the sabha and attendance is mandatory when some key decision has to be taken) and even if one villager does not agree, the sabha meets repeatedly till a consensus is reached. This working model of ‘self-governance’ is complemented by the forest resources owned by the community, a substantial portion of which is bamboo; and the villagers are managing their forest produce in a very transparent and equitable manner. They believe that they have enough to sustain everyone for now and for their future. However, village elders of Mendha are worried that the conventional system of education is not so useful for them. There must be appropriate ways to learn “how to live a good life” in the village and not only to migrate to cities. They ask: how can we teach our children to manage our resources in a better manner, thereby earning their livelihood, and also ensuring sustainability and biodiversity? How can the students do much of their school learning through productive work? These questions are not unique to Mendha alone: all over India, many teachers, parents, and communities are bothered about what should go into the school curriculum to make education more meaningful and contextual for children.
Gandhi had an answer to some of these concerns; he proposed a model in 1937 and called it nai talim or basic education. For him, nai talim, with hands-on productive work as the central pedagogy in schools, was a tool to realise an ideal society. As Krishna Kumar argues, “Basic education was an embodiment of Gandhi’s perception of an ideal society as one consisting of small, self-reliant communities. To him, Indian villages were capable of becoming such communities; indeed, he believed that Indian villages were historically self-reliant, and the great task now was to restore their autonomy and to create the conditions necessary for economic self-sufficiency and political dignity in villages.”
Would a nai talim today, for thousands of villages in India, involve school children learning through productive work around bamboo? For forest based villages like Mendha, bamboo is a major economic resource. An estimated 8.96 million ha forest area, which is approximately one third of India’s forest cover contains bamboo. It grows practically all over India and we have a rich bamboo diversity with 124 indigenous and exotic species found naturally and/or under cultivation. Although dwindling in many parts of India due to over exploitation, bamboo still plays a major role in the livelihood of many rural people.
What is so special about bamboo?
- They are the fastest growing plants on the planet with a growth rate of up to 1.2m a day. This fast growth enables frequent harvesting without causing damage to the ecosystem. Because of this fast growth, bamboo can also capture vast amounts of carbon for climate mitigation, and can quickly do “afforestation” of degraded lands.
- They are stronger than steel and with high durability. Thus bamboo produces a higher quality of wood than many other hardwood trees and so has versatile uses as building material.
- They are still sufficiently cheap and plentiful and are known as “poor man’s timber” playing a major role in the livelihood of rural people.
- They can be moulded to some extent like cane to make various implements, furniture, and handicrafts.
- They are very important as raw materials for various products: in fact it is known as the “green gold” as a cost effective and fast renewable and ecologically beneficial material available in plenty on earth. It is used in a wide range of products, from paper to construction materials and flooring to clothing.
- Their roots can reduce soil erosion by up to 75 per cent.
- Pickled or stewed bamboo shoots are regarded as delicacies in many parts of the country.
- Bamboo has medicinal properties also as they have high nutritional value, are low in fat and are good antioxidants.
Proposed bamboo-based work and learning in school Class I – II – III
• Children will learn the local word for bamboo
• Listing of all things made from bamboo and drawing pictures.
• If there are any local poems, songs, stories around bamboo, using them appropriately in class.
• Writing the names of all people who make bamboo products with the name of the product.
• Some simple weaving work with bamboo strips (if possible).
Class IV – V
• Show all bamboo groves on a village map.
• Do a bamboo census of the village or hamlet.
• Find out from elders if bamboo numbers and plantations are decreasing or increasing.
• Is there only one kind of bamboo grown in your village? Are there different kinds? What are their names? How are they different?
• Find the price of bamboo. Calculate the total value of bamboo of the whole village.
• Find the price of various bamboo products.
• Make some bamboo crafts and small items suitable for this age.
Class VI – VII – VIII
• Do you deliberately plant and grow bamboos or does it grow by itself? Can you cultivate bamboos? How would you go about doing it?
• Measure bamboo growth rate.
• Do you know if bamboo suffers from any pest attack or diseases? If so what is done about it?
• Do you know of other varieties of bamboos? Where do they grow? What do they look like? What are their special characters?
• If you would like to grow a new bamboo variety in your area, how would you choose the variety?
• Have you seen bamboo flowers? Are there stories around it?
• Were there more products made out of bamboo before? Why this change? And now what materials are these products made out of? Why?
• You may not have seen, but have you heard of other products made from bamboo and other uses?
• Practical work to be done by students: bamboo propagation especially with non-local varieties. Learn to make bamboo shoot dishes.
• Make appropriate bamboo crafts and products of daily use.
Class IX – X
• Botanical classification and structure of bamboo.
• Do you know about any processing or treatment that has to be done to make different uses and products of bamboo?
• What do we mean by strength of bamboo? How does one measure this strength?
• Practical work to be done by students: treatment and processing of bamboo with emphasis on effective techniques not used locally.
• Learn to make products which are not made locally.
• Learn to do agroforestry involving bamboo.
Some issues and outcomes
There will be different kinds of villages with respect to bamboo: villages with forests with lots of bamboo; villages with forest but very little bamboo or none; villages with no forests but lots of bamboo; no forests and very little bamboo or none; villages with lots of degraded lands; villages with un-irrigated single cropping lands; villages with fairly thriving bamboo based livelihoods; villages which just sell their bamboo and do not make many products. So the actual activities will have to be contextual depending upon the above factors.
Some of the expected outcomes of integrating bamboo in the school curriculum are:
- A greater understanding of the various aspects of bamboo. Starting from local knowledge and expanding through literature. Learning language, math, science, social studies in the process.
- Bringing in new varieties of bamboo, increasing biodiversity and sustainability. Learning the cultivation skills and wherever possible, increase the cultivation of suitable varieties of bamboo.
- Learning new and diverse uses and production skills related to bamboo products and increase in livelihood options. This is crucial as traditional knowledge regarding bamboo and its uses and artisans is dwindling.
Many of the activities will also need school teachers to collaborate with local bamboo cultivators or artisans or villagers who are better equipped to deal with the non-textbook part. This implies a more organic school-community linkage and throws some challenges to our conventional notion of curriculum and school routine.
(This article would not have been possible without the help and guidance from Dr Syam Viswanath and Dr. Dhanya B)
Sujit Sinha has worked in a rural NGO in West Bengal for 20 years where some experiments were done with adolescents to see what they can do to solve their own life and livelihood issues. He is currently a faculty at Azim Premji University, teaching courses on the relevance of Gandhi and Tagore today. He can be reached at sujit.sinha@apu.edu.in.
Nazrul Haque works at Azim Premji University and is generally interested in Gandhian alternatives to development. She can be reached at nazrul.haque@apu.edu.in.