Ropani is a traditional practice of mass transplanting of paddy in the mountainous regions of Uttarakhand. It is not just an agricultural activity but a symbol of community unity and a deep connection with nature.
By Nitin Jugran Bahuguna
At a unique event held recently in Tehri district, women of Bugala village were honoured as chief guests by their community at the traditional harvest festival known as Ropani.
The festival was the culmination of a year’s hard work regenerating barren land into fertile fields which have already yielded amazing dividends for the villagers who had watched helplessly as their lands lay waste for over 12 years.
Ropani is a traditional practice of mass transplanting of paddy in the mountainous regions of Uttarakhand. It is not just an agricultural activity but a symbol of community unity and a deep connection with nature. By honouring the women, a clear message was sent out about women’s crucial role in agricultural activities in their community.
Magni Devi, 85, is among those who spearheaded the pilot project to revive the barren land in the village. Her story is an inspirational one and caught the attention of the authorities as she was among the women awarded by the Chief Minister for achievement in agriculture at a function held in Dehradun on Women’s Day this year.
Married at the tender age of 13, Magni Devi opened her home to her three sisters and three-year-old brother when they were orphaned. Raising them as her own, apart from her own five children, she arranged their marriages in the same village.
Life was not easy, she admits. “I reared four buffaloes, a pair of bullocks and six goats while my husband used to prepare food at weddings,” she says. Even before the pilot project, she was involved in agriculture, cultivating seasonal vegetables like arbi, mandwa, wheat, sesame and rice.
Mass Celebration
Sarojini Rayal, 49, is another woman to take the lead in the project, mobilizing 18 women from three villages to help rejuvenate the land. “The area was all in wilderness with tall trees everywhere. It took us six months to clear it all, even with the aid of a tractor which we purchased under the programme’, she states.
The project, entitled: ‘Joint Farm Management for Off-Season Vegetable Production in Hill Areas through Adopting Eco-Friendly Crop Rotations and Practices”, was launched in January last year. In the first phase, villagers undertook cleaning of traditional canals, re-building farm boundaries through MNREGA, preparing land by clearing bushes, levelling and ploughing with tractor and organizing meetings at the village level. Subsequently, seeds of seasonal and off-season vegetables were sown, a regular irrigation system was put in place, eco-friendly crop rotation was adopted and women were given training in off-season farming.
Paddy was planted on about 35 nalis of vacant land and over 250 people from eight villages were involved in the project, funded by The Himalaya Trust and overseen by Punarutthan Rural Development and Social Welfare Society, both Dehradun- based NGOs.
(A nali is a traditional unit of land measurement in the hill regions of Uttarakhand and one nali is equal to approximately 2,160 square feet).
About 70 nalis of wasteland have been revived and an income of Rs 40,000 was earned from off-season vegetable production, claims Guru Prasad Raiyal, who quit his job in Dehradun to prepare his land for the new crops. “The initiative we are running will be carried forward by the next generation,” he says proudly.
The Ropani festival, a mass celebration of the revival of traditional plantation on lands, has been restored after 12 years of neglect. Women planted paddy while singing to the beat of traditional musical instruments. Children witnessed for the first time the process of transplanting seeds, planting paddy and ploughing with oxen, many participating in the process themselves. “Our fields were lying vacant and the village did not have the same liveliness as before,” remarks Sarojini. “Now it seems that a respectable life is possible even in the village.”
