Burnt bamboo area.

And this means that people can no longer simply live off the land in order to survive, send children to school, and meet the basic needs. They now need some level of government employment as some sort of "multi-cropping"[1] to augment their income needs.

Burnt hillsides.

Of course for those families that don't have one member employed at a basic level by government, it is a different story. Half the year is spent first clearing the land and burning just before the rains, then planting and guarding until the harvest of rice. For the other half of the year, they will wait or look for other work on a construction site or labour elsewhere. The hills are burning today as people expect rain in early March. For two months there has been no rain at all and that is unusual. The first flush of leaves on the tea farms in Assam will be lost if rain does not come in a week, and also much of the ash from the burnings will have blown away.

The burning is extensive, and fires go way beyond the area to be planted in a season. In a nearby village, part of a tea farm burned along by the road and a transformer close to the scrub also burned. Often, a catchment area for water gets burned and in the last few days someone's house also got caught up in the fires. Marginal trees get sapped of their life when they could have been a source of production. Bananas are scorched and people have to wait for a new sucker to emerge. When the hillsides burn, much of the nutrient goes up in smoke and the ash gets blown away. When the rain comes, it often carries off any ash left on the surface.

Jayan Singh sketching his thoughts of issues faced by jhum farming practices.

Last year the bamboos flowered after five years and so all the bamboo clumps have died. The new emerging shoots get burned in the process, setting back the much needed income from its future cutting.

Some people are trying permanent crops, coffee, rubber, and pepper in the shade, and even sugar cane, pineapple, ginger, bananas at least along the side. But people in general are not used to these crops on a field scale. Government projects abound and people will work with the activities as long as there is money. But when the project ends, too often the land reverts to old habits of the people and a few succeed in transitioning. Even with NGO help, it is difficult for families to build up capacity and confidence in a permanent crop that will benefit them throughout a full year. The hill rice is what people need and they cannot wait for a permanent crop to mature.

Students of St Mary's High School Langting, at their back is a regenerating jhum area.		Understanding jhum and climate change.		Weekly notice board in St Mary's High School Langting

Asking the youth in St Mary's High School in Langting, they see this as a problem they cannot deal with yet. They understand the deforestation in their area and have learned its relation to climate change. Those with best grades will seek a job in the city but how will those who stay behind cope? We talked about the meaning of adaptation, of how to shift to permanent crops, protection of water sources, protection of community forests, and how they can talk of what will be their problems with community. From here starts a new beginning. 

[1] Technically, multiple cropping (multi-cropping) is the practice of growing two or more crops in the same space during a single growing season. It can take the form of double-cropping, in which a second crop is planted after the first has been harvested, or relay cropping, in which the second crop is started amidst the first crop before it has been harvested (Bunnett, 2002). Multi-cropping is found in many agricultural traditions. In the Garhwal Himalaya of India, a practice called baranaja involves sowing 12 or more crops on the same plot, including various types of beans, grams, and millets, and harvesting them at different times. Traditional swidden practices throughout Asia are very diverse and could use 30 or so different plants in a new clearing.