Every morning this was the question from their three small children, resentful at being left alone for another long spell of 14 hours: "Where are you going?" The parents, Mary Vattamattam and Choitresh Kumar Ganguly ["Bablu"] found it equally hard to leave—or, truthfully name the places their work took them to. The children wouldn't have coped with names like Chennakothapalli, Mushtikovila or Shyapuram. So they took to saying: "We are off to Timbaktu!"

It had already been a long journey for the two of them to this point in the late eighties. And their goal, however they imagined it, was still afar as the metaphorical Timbaktu.

Adventures of Mary and Bablu are of interest not only because of their current work with nature. Their story is of value to understand, how during the dark eighties when the State lorded over everything, small Indians nevertheless stood up for their convictions and struggled on layers beyond our eyeshot. Mary and Bablu were part of the flux agitating for a fair deal for rural India. They began with Marx, and had doubts rise in their minds. When the took to caring for land and trying to grow food, they discovered the relevance of Gandhi. Utopia however is still very far, but now, the road feels right.

Players in flux

By the sixties, it was clear India was sleep-walking through its Independence. It was not sure of its identity, ideology, politics, economics or statecraft. Every voice and idea was fighting for space. Poverty, shortages and insecurity stalked the land. Sincere people, all wanting a better India, had each, a prescription.

The colonial mind set had not changed. [Many believe it still hasn't]. Bablu tells an amusing story: "My father was an agitator for India's freedom and was thrown in the jail by the British. After Independence his application to join the police force was rejected because he had a 'jail record'. Ironies didn't stop there: my father went on to England to qualify himself for a job in India".

Bablu's childhood through the sixties was in Bombay and Bangalore. He took to the theatre rather than to academics. When he was 20, he met the legendary Narendar Bedi of Calcutta.

Narendar had been affected by his work with Vincent Ferrer, a Spanish Jesuit priest living in India since 1920. In the late seventies Ferrer, seeing the poverty all around, ended his life as a man of cloth, married an Englishwoman and went around rural Maharashtra observing farmers in distress. He became the centre of a huge media controversy. His programme of drilling tube-wells for farmers was suspected to be a Trojan horse. Forming Rural Development Trust [RDT] to continue his work with creating irrigation facilities, Ferrer moved to Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh.

Narendar was living in the USA with his wife and two sons when he read of Ferrer and his work in the LIFE magazine. He came back to India to work in the rural areas on the invitation of Ferrer.

Anantapur, scorched by the sun:

Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh is located in the Rayalaseema region. It is perennially drought prone. It receives the second lowest rainfall in India: 522mm. Of its 4 million population, close to half were deep in debt. Only 15% of its cultivable land is irrigated. It challenges men of action. And they came.

Green Past [-from timbaktu.org]
Today Anantapur District is nearly a desert, however this was not always the case. Anantapur District was part of one of the most powerful and rich kingdoms of south India - The Vijayanagara Kingdom. Penukonda, situated 70 kilometers south of Anantapur town and 140 kilometers north of Bangalore Metropolis, was the summer capital of King Krishnadevaraya, some 500 years ago.
In the late 19th century a well known British forester had described the forests of Penukonda as one of the finest summer deciduous forests in the south. The Pomegranates and Sitaphal of Penukonda were well known even in the courts of Delhi. For over 700 years, from the Vijayanagara Rayalus to the Bahamani Kings, from Tipu Sultan and the Nizam of Hyderabad to the British, great armies had fought to keep control of this rich and fertile land.
Although the rainfall was always scanty, the farmers knew how to deal with this situation and their agricultural techniques suited the conditions. They had an appropriate selection of sturdy drought resistant crops and their cropping pattern protected the fertility of the soil, which they further increased through on farm production of manure. An elaborate system of scarce water resource management by harvesting of rainwater through tanks and canals allowed successful farming under difficult conditions. Effective community management insured the fair use of the Commons and the sustainable use of natural resources.
Teak and Hardwikia Binata, two of the finest timber trees to grow in India, were exported from here to lay the railway line between Gudur and Madras. Till recently, food and fruit crops in the district were grown with rain water harvested in more than 300 major irrigation tanks (Cheruvu), some having Ayacuts of over 1000 acres and known to store enough water to grow two if not three crops a year. There also were numerous minor Tanks (Kunta) and perennial springs. Many different local varieties of rice, major and minor millets were grown here.

After a few years with Ferrer, Bedi decided to start the Young India Project. Capt Davinson, associated with MYRADA [Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency, created in 1968 to settle Tibetan refugees in Karnataka] promised to help raise funds. Bablu aged 22 in 1978, arrived in Guttur, A.P.,in a tonga to join Bedi. He says: "I was fantasising: we were going to change Anantapur. I was then, I must add, an Anglicised Bengali with no Telugu." Dreamers need no qualifications, though. He was to stay with Young India for 12 years.

Mary was born in Idikki District, Kerala in 1956. Her folks were liberal and had made her feel proud and equal to the man's world out there. When she finished her Masters in Social Work, she asked her parents to let her travel in India for a year. The logical first stop was Anantapur where her brother was already working with Ferrer. Coming from wet and lush Idikki, the near desert that Anantapur was, unsettled her.

Ferrer suggested that she go and work with an organization called CROSS in Hyderabad area which was doing very radical work in those days.

The play begins:

The cast of players is almost complete. What happened next in the play? "Ferrer is one of the least recognised men in India," says Bablu, now."His role in evolving development strategies was path breaking." But twenty years ago they were impatient with his prescriptions. Ferrer believed in technical and management solutions: tube wells, women's organisations, efficiencies etc.

It takes a very long time to work with people who may not know how to articulate what they want, but who certainly know what they don't. Despite great stresses in her personal life, Mary's hard work in Nalgonda was bearing fruits. But the YIP was not going anywhere. Work put in seemed to amount to nothing. Were they on the right road?

That's when Ram Esteves happened. An intense, serious man, he brought Marx over as a solution. In a course that ran 3 months he taught 'dialectical materialism': set conflicts in motion and out of their interaction, solutions will be born. Marx Study Circles sprang up everywhere. Mary and Bablu met at one of them. Bablu and Narendar were transformed men by now. Mary too was. They had all 'got' Marx. They would seed local revolutions and realise rapid, total development.

For the next ten years, they travelled the district threadbare. They raised awareness among marginal farmers and organised them into effective unions, in order to leverage their struggle for rights. Today, the Agricultural Labourers Union they initiated has over 200,000 members all over AP. But that is another story. Mary and Bablu and a close associate John D'Souza believed they had to go beyond unionising farm workers. D'Souza is a pioneer in the field of development whose work stretches back to 1972. He is today the Executive Director of Centre for Education and Documentation, Mumbai, a fine institution serving development work.

Driven to Gandhi:

"One day, a long-known fact popped up again, but with a new and greater compulsion," says Bablu. Rayalaseema ["Royal Realm"] was in living memory, a wooded country. Streams flowed everywhere. There were numerous reserved water bodies across the country. Penukonda, now a bald, burning hill, was then known as a balmy hill station where the king had his summer retreat.

Environmental vandalism of the last six decades had disrupted ancient work cycles of the countryside. Villages had been shell-shocked by the discontinuity. They were too wise to know that the prosperity that YIP promised cannot be grabbed from someone else but had to rebuilt. They needed new maps to rediscover their disrupted connection with nature.

"It occurred to me then, that we were not part of the productive processes but were standing apart, preaching revolution to preoccupied villagers," says Bablu. Then he adds softly: "Marxism is a great analytical tool. But it breeds arrogance and closes your mind."

Gandhi was wiser. Even as he carried on his political work, on another plane, he strove to understand the salt of the earth. Gandhi went beyond drilling deep wells or organising the masses for revolution. He believed in life that was aligned with nature, not in a struggle against it

The Timbaktu mission:

In January,'89 Mary and Bablu got married. In November that year Mary, John and Bablu pooled their funds to buy 32 acres of derelict land. They called it Timbaktu, for want of a better name [-was there one?]. 'This we shall green', they told themselves. As it always happens at moments of such resolves, wise counsels descended upon them. Mollison, Fukuoka, watershed development and afforestation were their new drivers.

Timbaktu will be a commune devoted to nature. It will seek to attract individuals who believe in the primacy of nature. They will live without the frills of life but with the most commitment to enable nature to regain a foothold. They had little money but a clear vision. But they had resourceful people like Simhachalam and his wife Sashi. These two had been Mary's comrades in Srikakulam and moved in with her to Timbaktu. Bablu says, "Without these two, who are of rural stock, we would not have dared to start Timbaktu, let alone live on it,"

The 32 acres lie almost two kilometers from the highway. No road to it existed and only an informal one does, now. Electricity is not available. Around it are several hundred acres of barren wilderness. There were hills in the backdrop that had been denuded. Between recurring droughts, need for firewood, and the local cattle that graze them to a close clip, the hills had no chance.

Land as teacher:

"First thing that happened was that we began to lose our arrogance, because the land dared and mocked us," says Bablu. They realised they must cooperate with people to get anything done- lectures won't do.

The land they had bought had been a meeting place for herdsmen. Instead of fencing its property in, Timbaktu began friendships with them. Mostly they exchanged stories and in the process gained a lot of local lore.

It is not as though the poor in India are unaware of the need to care for nature[Not so, the well-to-do, though]. But they need solutions for living out their daily lives; work for any distant goal had to be fitted within their tight time-table. Over months, there was an accord on some measure of cattle control. With that agreed, nature got its break. The hills began to regenerate and trees began to display their crowns.

There were results to see in just one year. In the protected areas grass production shot up. They could send away cartloads of grass. Next year they managed to get over 700 acres of hill sides under grazing control. Herdsmen were drawn in further and taught fire-patrol, prevention and fighting. Everything was kept informal and corrected as and when needed. Timbaktu's own acres however were planted with greater design, the Permaculture way.

Collective arrivals:

U Subbaraju, a long time member of the Timbaktu Collective is worth more than a mere mention. His life is a rare Indian cameo. He was born in Tirupati. His father could not feed his family by farming his unproductive land. He became an itinerant coolie in various towns, sending small sums of money home. He died when Subbaraju was five. His mother sent him to the Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanam [TTD] schools. He stood out in academics. He entered the prestigious IIT and then went on to do his Masters in Energy Systems. In 1990, Subbaraju,son of a coolie, earned his PhD. Such stories are infrequent in India. In 1995, Dr Subbaraju joined the Timbaktu Collective to educate children of the countryside. Such personal choices, alas, are even more infrequent.

When Dinesh Kumar qualified as an engineer in Mysore, he was quite aware of the limitations of a career in industry; his life-long interest in the outdoors would not be served. He arrived in Timbaktu in 1992. He is everywhere, catching snakes, clambering up hills, exploring farming ideas, gathering wild seeds or listening to a micro-issue.

B Venkatesh, born in Kadalur, Tamil Nadu was progressively losing his eye-sight and by ten was totally blinded. He went on to excel in academics and had a successful career in Rallis and TISCO. In 1988, he met mary and Bablu and picked Timbaktu in 2002 as the place he wanted to be in. He teaches and trains teachers to cope with disabled people in a 50 km radius. He is an internationally-known teacher for people who work with disability issues.

Then there is Akulappa, a radical student leader in the 80s. Son of a local farmer, he completed his masters in Rural development and joined Timbaktu in 1992. Then he went on to do his degree in Law and is one of the pillars of the Collective. There are, in all, 60 members in the Collective ranging in age from 20 to 47. With growing, committed support, Timbaktu began to extend into the nearby villages.

Renewing assets:

Mushtikovila, a village at the foot of Kalpavalli hills is a farming community with a relationship with the hills. Timbaktu began desilting the neglected water tank, with villagers contributing 50% of the required money. In 1993, strangely, the tank filled for the first time in recent memory. It has been filling regularly ever since, to its new capacity. Fields were worked longer. Villagers became willing listeners to Timbaktu's plans.

They began stewardship of the slopes overlooking Mushtikovila, about 150 acres in all. Villagers restrained their grazing cattle and soon the hills responded. Small game reappeared.Today, the Collective has the satisfaction of having planted and managing regeneration of over 8,000 acres of the Kalpavalli range. Each of the 8 command villages has a Vana Samrakshana Committee [Forest Protection Committee]. The VSCs have formed a federation, Kalpavalli Adavi Samakya. There are 1320 active members. The entire restoration work of hills by means sparing them mindless grazing, is managed by the Samakya. native species that go by quaint names like Maddi, Neeruddhi, Pacchari, Kanuga, Eetha, Rela and Modhuga have re-emerged as if from nowhere.. Revenue from minor forest produce accrues to the Samakya.

The work in progress:

Timbaktu's conviction is that the Women-Children-Environment linkage is the development molecule that builds everything else. Mary has been organising women in neighbouring villages. There are over 7,000 members in the numerous women thrift groups managing a capital of over Rs.1 crore.

In the Timbaktu campus is a delightful school for children of the villages. It is residential, with children going home only every three or four weeks. There, Subbaraju inculcates the inquiring spirit and young lady teachers, the spirit of fun. Care for environment is woven into every activity. It is totally free. Timbaktu's education programme extends to several visitors to its seminars and workshops to share experiences in development.

To a casual visitor, their idea of development may be puzzling. There is no electricity or running water. Nights are lit by 12v bulbs running on batteries charged by solar panels. This, 14 years after Timbaktu began. Of course the smiles are broader, tempers even, the nights heady with fragrance and the campus alive with birds and small game. But if these don't count, take this for a progress report for ten years work:

Until rains in 2004 broke it, Rayalaseema was going through a 3 year long drought. By 2003, villagers everywhere were selling their cattle to slaughterers. But not the 8 villages where the Samakya has a unit. They had more fodder than they could use. From the 8,000 acres on the Kalpavalli under regeneration, close to 7,000 cart loads of fodder were carried away by 3,000 farmers in 40 villages of Roddam, Ramagiri, Chennakothapalli and Penukonda mandals. Farmers even came from Thirumali in neighbouring Karnataka state. Additionally, the hills welcomed 40,000 starving sheep from 23 villages. The regenerating hills had yielded Rs 27.50 lakhs of produce, and over 34,000 work-days of employment. There was enough water in Mushtikovila to raise a short-term native paddy that uses less water than miracle seeds.

In far Timbaktu, a different slide-rule is in use to compute development. This can factor in, the hills' green patina.

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Timbaktu Collective
Chennakothapalli Village - 515101
Anantapur District, AP
Phones: [8559] 24-335; 240149; 240337;
email: ;

Chennakothapalli, the village closest to Timbaktu, is 100 km from Anantapur on the Anantapur-Bangalore highway.
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September, 2005