Learning to live with the wild: Resilience of a forest-fringe village of India

Kokkabare is a small, remote and lovely village in the MM Hills Wildlife Sanctuary. This little hamlet has no proper road, nor does it have electricity connections or running water.

The nearest major road is a 3-4 km trek downhill.

The people, like others dwelling near or within forests, are heavily dependent on forest produce for everyday use and livelihoods.

The forest provides them with food for their livestock, and with non-timber forest produce (NTFP) like firewood and grasses to sell, and for their own household use.

The women in this village go into the forest to harvest a specific variety of dwarf palm called Phoenix humilis, which they make into brooms to sell.

To harvest these plants, women must make multiple forays into the forest. This exposes them to potentially dangerous interactions with wild animals like elephants, leading to human-wildlife conflict.

Further, the fronds of this palm are also eaten by wild herbivores like elephants, gaur, sloth bear, and sambhar. Harvest of the palm fronds can deplete food for wildlife.

The women need to spend 6-8 hours collecting fronds, traversing long distances in rough terrain and harsh weather.

Once the brooms are made, the journey to sell them at the nearest market takes an entire day. The dirt paths leading away from the hamlet are hard to walk during the monsoon, making year-round access to markets impossible.

While some of the men travel to nearby towns or cities for seasonal work, the women mostly stay back to collect fronds and grasses.

Our team worked with the women of Kokkabare to design an initiative that could address all these problems: their livelihoods, human-wildlife conflict, and conservation of the forests and its wildlife.

We brainstormed together and decided to find a livelihood that would become self-sustaining, add skill and value to everyone's lives, while also addressing everyone's conservation concerns.

Together we roped in Krishna Murthy (Kris), an experienced skills trainer and handicrafts curator.

With Kris, they learnt new skills and explored alternative sources of livelihood, aiming to reduce their dependence on forests.

We roped in Krishna Murthy (Kris), an experienced skills trainer and handicrafts curator who runs a handicraft initiative called 'Basava by Kris'.

With Kris, the rural women learnt new skills, designing and developing commercial products for a sustained livelihood.

Soon the woman of Kokkabare took over, working hard and learning hand-stitching, machine-stitching, embroidery, and screen-printing. They also learnt how to make market-viable products.

Given the pandemic and the immediate demand for masks, the women started making hand-stitched masks.

The women hand-stitched hundreds of masks, learning and improving their handiwork with each piece they produced.

Masks were the first product of the Kokkabare women and this remains their best-selling one.

Hundreds of these masks have been sold so far, with a wide range of designs and patterns to choose from.

The masks are double-layered cotton, and approved for sale after a quality check. Each mask carries a tag with the women's story.

With increasing confidence, the women have now started sewing bags of different shapes and sizes, with screen-prints of tiger faces on them.

As they learn and get better, they have graduated from making simple tote bags and drawstring pouches to producing larger drawstring backpacks with zippered pockets.

Sometimes the face masks are made from fabric left over after making other products. This ensures complete utilisation of fabric, and near-zero wastage.

The proceeds from the sale of these products first goes to pay the women, and then to fund the raw materials, equipment and training required, which comes from our team's funds.

We started this programme to offer these hard-working people new skills, market visibility and a fair opportunity to interact directly with customers to popularise their products.

As their skills develop, and their market expands, they are already working towards establishing a self-sustaining, community-based cooperative, ideated, owned and developed by them.

We are proud and awed by the women of Kokkabare.