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Problem Tree Gets to the Root of the Matter

Photos: Daniel Buckles

2009-04

The challenge: Bonded labourers lack legal title to land

One of the poorest of India’s 600 tribal groups, the Katkari live a precarious existence in about 300 hamlets near Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra. Traditionally nomadic hunter-gatherers, the Katkari were invited to settle decades ago by landowners in need of agricultural labourers.

In recent years, rising land values near India’s booming financial capital have prompted landowners to sell their land to developers, putting the Katkari at increased risk of eviction.

Despite a long history in the region, and state and federal legislation designed to protect the housing rights of tribal groups, the 250 000 Katkari lack legal title to land and are not permitted to make use of the land they live on. Unable to grow crops or raise small livestock for food, many Katkari have been forced into debt and bondage to survive.

Debt cycle

"The Katkari were left out," says Rajeev Khedkar, a long-time activist with the local NGO Academy of Development Sciences (ADS). "They never fought for their rights. So today we find that a large number of Katkari are without any access to land."

After they have brought in the landowners’ harvest, most able-bodied Katkari, including children, work eight months of the year as bonded labourers. They borrow money to see them through the lean season, and labour at brick kilns and charcoal furnaces to pay off the debts.

"This continues for a very long period, 15 years, 20 years, until they are old," Khedkar says. "After that, their children also get into the same cycle, because they do not have security of tenure."

The SAS² tool: Problem Tree

With the help of a Social Analysis Systems (SAS²) tool called the Problem Tree, residents of 10 Katkari hamlets began to grapple with the daunting challenges they face.

Rajeev Khedkar and Bansi Ghevde of ADS and Dnyaneshwar Patil of the local grassroots group SOBTI were among the facilitators who sat with villagers over the course of a day to generate a shared understanding of the community’s problems. Using visual imagery whenever possible, such as a piece of brick to represent the brick kilns, they collectively drilled down into the landlessness issue – defining the problem, determining causes and effects – until they had created a detailed “problem tree.”

Khedkar likens the communities’ core problem of landlessness to the trunk of the tree. The causes and sub-causes form the roots and rootlets, while the consequences and further effects are the branches and twigs radiating out from the trunk.

Lack legal knowledge

Among the causes of their landlessness, the Katkari cited the fact that they had never demanded rights to any of the land they had traditionally inhabited. And one reason for that – a sub-cause – was that they lacked legal knowledge of how to proceed with such a case.

In the consequences column, one result of their lack of legal title to land was that they were unable to build schools for their children. As a consequence, their children did not attend school. As a result, the community remained largely illiterate.

“When they just looked at the problem in isolation, they didn’t think that it was such a big problem,” Khedkar says. “But when they looked at all the different causes and the effects of all the problems, they felt that it is having a major impact on their lives and their livelihoods. Before we had done that, individually people realized that the problem was there, but nobody was willing to act as a village.”

Formal application

The problem tree was the starting point for explorations by the Katkari using other SAS² tools, such as Causal Dynamics and Stakeholder Analysis, to determine whether the conditions were right to take their case to government authorities. Together, the tools helped the Katkari arrive at a better understanding of their situation, and develop an action plan.

After three years of intensive activity – which included the SAS² sessions, legal training, and months of dialogue with government officials – the 10 communities have now submitted formal applications for tenure of village land. Many other villages are aware of the progress they have made. Recommendations to governments for a comprehensive solution are forthcoming in a collaborative book with Daniel Buckles of Carleton University.

“Here they were isolated and fragmented,” Khedkar says. “Now they’ve come together, and they’re saying that ‘we will stay put on this land. We will not let anyone evict us.’ ”

– Kelly Haggart is a senior writer with IDRC’s Communications Division.

SAS² Social Analysis Systems website

Audio: Hear Rajeev Khedkar describe how the Katkari used SAS² tools to help them present their case for land rights. [9 mins]

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