The New INDIAN EXPRESS

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The New INDIAN EXPRESS

SEED RITES AND FARMING RIGHT

It’s about sowing the seeds of change. On May 25, while others in the country celebrated Buddha Poornima, a small cluster of villages in Chennekothapalli area of Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh celebrated
Molakala Punnami, a traditional and unique seed festival. I grabbed the opportunity of visiting villages like Brahmanapalli and Narasingarayanipalli on the day to try and experience firsthand what the festival was all about. Molakala Punnami appears to be the only seed festival in India where the name itself is clearly indicative of what it is about: Seedlings Fullmoon Day

By Kavitha Kuruganti

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Let's do Timbaktu - Article in The Hindu

Bablu Ganguly is strolling through a forest with a friendly mongrel, when he decides to get his hands dirty. Scooping up a bit of earth, he says, “This is really rich stuff...all over here, the soil is pristine soil.” This wasn’t the case a few decades ago; the land was dead, and the forest Ganguly is standing in was a wasteland. (click here to read more)

'The Hindu' - Survey of Indian Agriculture 2012

Feasibility of farming for a small farmer today
- Article by Joseph Satish

The final draft of the National Policy for Farmers draft acknowledges that farming families bear the brunt of multiple risks such as price fluctuations and monsoon vagaries. The draft also acknowledges that farmers' livelihood safety is intrinsically related to the nation's food and nutrition security.(click here to read more)

Creating Inclusive Markets for Small Farmers in Anantapur

The final draft of the National Policy for Farmers drafted by the National Commission on Farmers in 2007 acknowledges that farming families bear the brunt of multiple risks such as price fluctuations and monsoon vagaries.

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Article by Ashish Kothari

Very Much on the Map: the Timbaktu Revolution - Article by Ashish Kothari on Timbaktu Collective  

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Article in 'The Outlook' on the works of the Collective

Timbaktu? Arcadia!
From a distance, Timbaktu seems like a mirage. The hilly terrain around is scrub country, angry red soil, thorny bushes, not a sign of water anywhere. In the middle of this is a lush green forest with over 400 species of swaying trees, bushes and creepers. This is Timbaktu, on the edges of Chennakothapalli village in Anantapur, one of India’s worst drought-prone districts where farmers have to coax their parched land every year to grow a crop of groundnut, sunflower or jowar. Tough weather conditions, deforestation and bad agricultural practices over long periods of time has left the farmer and the land on desolation road.
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Article in 'The Hindu' on the organic farming initiative

Go organic, become self-sufficient
First-time visitors to this remote and drought-prone district are struck with the heady smell of cow dung the moment they enter the village. While this may be repulsive to the guests, for members of the 60-odd farmers in this village, it is their claim to fame because they now boast of health and nutritive wealth.
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Article in Tehelka Magazine Nov 06, 2010 issue

Green Revitalisers
How do you bring back butterflies to a brown arid wasteland in one of the driest districts of the country? Ask Bablu Ganguly and his wife, Mary Vattamattam.
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Manipadma Jena in ‘IPS News’

Buoyed by Growing Market, More Farmers Go Organic
He had dedided to grow watermelons this summer on his one-acre plot, and so Veera Narayana went about  preparing the arid red earth by first ploughing it and then lighting fires in the furrows.
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De Michele RODET in his blog

Start and restart, constantly

HUMANIT Y IN DIALOGUE . During these three days, we expose, we experiment, we debate and feasting, sometimes humorous, but always with concern for humanity to match in question and issues relating to policy.
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Ranjini Sivaswamy in ‘The Better India’

Where the earth meets the sky – Timbaktu Collective

This is the story of a land that was at one time lying ravaged, drought stricken and forsaken. It was a committed revolution led by a couple, Bablu Ganguly and Mary Vattamattam, which has now transformed this land into an agro forest habitat. The unproductive soil was rejuvenated, rain water was harvested, trees were planted, crops were cultivated and the entire land blossomed.

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Article by Amy Liberman

Marginalised Farmers in Andhra Pradesh find support in the Timbaktu Collective

- Amy Liberman, Media Global Correspondent in India
23 December 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The second most drought-affected region in India, Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh witnesses dozens of farmer suicides each year. Forests cover just 5 percent of the sweeping region, but the Timbaktu Collective is working to boost those rates, while granting more than 3,000 landless and marginal farmers support and connections to the marketplace.

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Photoessay of Garima on the birds of Timbaktu

Timbaktu: Paradise regained

We first heard of Timbaktu Collective back in the days when Ranjeet was a volunteer in Asha-NYC/NJ and Asha first started supporting the Timbaktu schools in the ’90s.

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Swathi V in ‘The Hindu’

IITian takes a different path
The child contingent from Ananthapur that took part in the ‘Baalala Naatakotsavaalu’ (Children’s Theatre Festival) at Ravindra Bharathi had a remarkable mentor. Short, lean and plain, U. Subbaraju boasts of nothing unusual in his looks and can be easily lost in a crowd.
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Interview of Bablu in Development Nation

Out of the world
Choitresh Kumar Ganguly also known as Babloo Ganguly an Ashoka Fellow is a motivational force for many people on how to carry out environment protection and regeneration of degraded, drought-ridden lands in Andhra Pradesh. He has successfully rebuilt an agro-forest habitat on a 32-acre piece of land situated in one of the worst drought affected districts in India. It all started took it over in 1991. Today Timbaktu Collective is a registered NGO situated in Chennekothapalli, Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. His working team has formed an alternative living style based on sustainability of the eco-system deep inside the forest near to Chennekothapalli. Today both Babloo and his wife Mary Vattamattam inspire several people for their hard work and simple living. 
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Rajni Bakshi in ‘India Together’

Timbaktu Organic is scaling up
"If enough diversity is lost, the ability of crops to adapt and evolve will have been destroyed. We will not have to wait for the last wheat plant to shrivel up and die before wheat can be considered extinct. It will become extinct when it loses the ability to evolve and when neither its genetic defenses nor our chemicals are able to protect it. And that day might come quietly even as millions of acres of wheat blanket the earth."
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The Week - Couple of the Year 2005

Mary & Bablu Couple of the Year
They have created a new way of living in a dry and dusty region

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Article on Timbaktu in ‘Good News India’

No stops anywhere, after Gandhi
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!"
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Suresh Krishnamurthy in ‘The Hindu’

Paradise on earth...
WHEN I had forwarded my leave application for a holiday in Timbaktu, my boss and colleagues thought I had gone bonkers. The word `Timbaktu' means Sarihaddu Rekha, which in Telugu stands for the place where the earth meets the sky.
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