In the heart of change

Vanya Orr walks the villages and forests of the Nilgiris to create
self-sufficient communities, says Esther Elias.
Shola forests arch over a road winding up the Nilgiris to Kollimalai
village, 10 km from Udhagamandalam. In a terraced organic farm there,
a 79-year-old British woman skips over the slopes and plains, with a
backpackslung over her shoulders. Cold winds from the hills mess
withher cropped, grey hair. She pauses beside a row of lemongrass,
pulls off a slender leaf, crushes it and says, "The cymbopogon growing
higher up smells slightly warmer."Twenty years in the Nilgiris have
given Vanya Orr, and the thousand farmers she's taught, a personal
history with each of the 200 plants on the 1.7-acre farm.
Vanya's link with the Nilgiris dates back six generations to when her
grandmother Amy Ryan grew up in Ooty's plantations with her
grandparents. As a teacher in Bangalore's Bishop Cotton School, Amy
found love in James Peter Orr, then chairman of the Bombay Improvement
Trust. James went back to Bombay to seek permission for marriage and
wrote Amy a letter from everystation the train halted.Nine decades
later, in 1994, 60-year-old Vanya and her 80-year-old mother returned
to India to travel that letter trail. They then went up the Nilgiris
to find her mother's ancestral home. The windows had fallen in and the
doors were rotting but the house still stood; its ground floor home to
cows.
Vanya had returned to the Nilgiris amid a logjam between the
Government and the people who were employed on the Government Cinchona
Plantations, since the Forest Department in Dodabetta had reclaimed
the land where the plantations stood. "I had brought along pictures of
my grandparents and of their ancestors and the people told me our
destinies were linked. But I didn't know the language, or how anything
worked here; it would have been egotistical to think I could help at
all," she says. Vanya stayed withthe cows for three dayshoping for
some clarityof thought. When nonearrived, she returned to the U.K.,
but friends handed her 500 pounds and sent her back with assistance
from Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT),
Bangalore.
With FRLHT, Vanya began an organic Medicinal Plant Development Area
(MPDA) in Dodabetta that employed primarily women and paid them the
standardwage rate for men. "The village women taught me Tamil, gave me
a bed and a mattress, food and care," she says.
Organic agriculture was central to Vanya's childhood spent on a farm
in Wales. Her years as a nurse in London taught her about alternative
medicine systems. These skills came together at MPDA in Cinchona
village whereshe worked with 80 women in distillation units that
manufactured medicinal oils for sale in tandem with the Spices Board.
An ailing mother saw her return to the U.K. six years later. "It felt
like abandoning my baby and the separation hurt me, emotionally and
spiritually."
While in the U.K., a report published by theHorticultural Department
in the Nilgiris plagued Vanya's mind. It said the collective debt of
the Nilgiris' farmers for agricultural chemicals crossed Rs.30 crore.
Moreover, it deemed the majority of the grasslands unfit for
agriculture due to aggressive farming. "I felt we needed to revive the
land under ICU and hence came back in early 2001."
Organic farm
With Jayalakshmi, a friend from her Cinchona days, Vanya began an
organic farm and nursery in Lakanmanai. "We lived together in a loft
abovea cowshed and in the land around us we composted waste, made
mulch and biodynamic sprays, andgrew vegetables without disease since
the herbs surrounding them protected them and us." The seeds of
Vanya's organisation, Earth Trust (ET), were sown in this nursery.
Today, three such nurseries exist. Over a thousand farmers have been
trained in organicfarming. At least 500 of them have reduced pesticide
and fertilizer usage to 10 per cent. Over 100 have shifted over
completely and market their produce through a farmers' collective. As
we pick our way through the strawberry patches, carrots and cabbage,
beans and peas at the Kollimalai nursery, the smell of fresh dung
floats in. Vanya runs vermicompost through her fingers and says:
"Organic farming is about loving and respecting the Earth;
acknowledging that she is a living being. She should have the same
rights that humans do. Like it is illegal to kill, so should it be to
wound the Earth."
Vanya also returned to India drawn by the memory of a woman she knew
in Dodabetta,who immolated herself because of domestic violence and
died in Vanya's arms. "You can't watch something like that without it
searing your consciousness. Alcoholism and anger stem from
disempowerment; and women are often trapped in these situations. We
wanted to give them tools to cope, not escape." Thusbegan ET's women
empowerment initiatives.
In the heart of the community in Kateri village is a small hall where
18 women, mostly Badagas, gatherdaily. In a dialect more Kannada than
Tamil they talk of husbands, children, health and food, as they create
handmade frocks, petticoats, pillow covers and sweaters. From 2004, 16
other villages have hosted ET's Income Generation Project for three
months at a time. Women often join not knowing how to thread a needle.
Many leave to open tailoring units of their own.
Training women
Intrinsic to Vanya's efforts with women is a12-module health
programme. It teaches women about their bodies, stress management,
common ailments and treatments through reflexology, yoga, meditation,
massage, ayurveda, siddha and homeopathy. It focuses on locally
cultivable medicinal herbs. Twelve village health workers from the
Kota, Irula, Toda and Kurumba tribes have received this training in
depth. Every morning, they travel over a hundred km from East Nilgiris
to theherbal preparation uniton the Nilgiri Adivasi Welfare
Association hospital grounds in Kollikarai village, Kotagiri. There,
they make adathodai syrup, hair oils and massage oils, dry powders and
triphala mixtures, among others, to be used in their villages.
Between them they also take care of the health needs of 50 villages.
While Vanya's work with the men and women of the Nilgiris has been
prolific, it is projects with children that excite her most.
"Today, farming families do not want their children to touch the soil
and tribal children don't know their forefathers' medicinal remedies.
So much ancestral knowledge will die with this generation," she says.
To right this, ET began eco clubs in 16 Government middle schools.
On a warm afternoon, we climb the stone steps to the one in Thenalai
village, the first to join the programme. A green patch opens to the
side, where children grow vegetables for their midday meal. "Five
kilos of cowdung,four litres of cow urine,three litres of curd,
twolitres of milk and one litre of ghee go into panchakavyam, which
fertilises the garden," explains Kausalya, a student. Twenty-two
children have used the techniques learnt in this garden to begin
kitchen gardens in their homes. "When theparents see the first-fruits
of the children's effort, you should see the joy," says Vanya.
Most schools have on-site gardens, but those without the space, plant
and nurture the Shola forests around their schools. About 22 km from
Thenalai, members of the Guernsey School Eco Club cleaned the
forestsnearby and collected 4,000 plastic bottles. These were stacked
one above the other to build a greenhouse where indigenous Shola
saplings are nursed.
This intimate, sustainable relationship with the Earth is what Vanya
envisions for the Nilgiris. "We're moving towards a technological
world order where all our food, water and resources are shipped in
from a centralised source. If a landslide occurs and villages are
blocked off, there's absolute havoc. These were once entirely
self-sufficient communities. We need to go back to that stage," she
says.
Vanya's work has brought her in contact with officials who've
sometimes resented the "European in their patch", but the stories of
changed lives egg her on. She narrates the story of Sriram, who'd lost
his parents and was living with his grandmother who wasn't healthy
enough to work. "He wasn't doing too well in school. But at home, he'd
created this beautiful garden off which his grandmothercooked each
day. That'sthe thing about India. Every emotion, every story is so
powerful and concentrated. People are very very happy or very very sad
or very very kind. India is very very."