Gram Art Project
There is an ongoing problem with the rural economy and the rural youth. India has one of the youngest workforce in the world with more than 50% of the population below the age of 25 and more than 65% of the population below the age of 35. Around 65% of our country’s population lives in villages, but the youth of the villages migrate from their villages, their home, just because they can’t find any dignified livelihood opportunities in their village.
A major chunk of the rural population is engaged in agriculture. With a lack of fair prices of agricultural produce, the rural economy has collapsed, and this led to an overall lack of prosperity and dignity in farming as a profession. With no dignified opportunities around the village, a collapsed rural economy, and a patriarchal population trying to stick to their traditional and superstitious beliefs, the youth of the village migrated to the cities, in search of opportunities and livelihood. This is a huge problem since many people have to leave their homes, and in some cases their loved ones just because they don’t have dignified opportunities and assurance of proper livelihood in their village.
Gram Art Project Collective, led by Shweta Bhattad and Tanmay Joshi, are creating a collective space with farmers, artists, makers, women, and many more with the aim to provide dignified opportunities by creating products and produce from non-GM, IPR-free, non-hybrid indigenous cotton, plantable seed papers and edible artefacts from the organic produce of the farms.
About the NGO
Gram Art Project is a collective of farmers, artists, makers, women, and many other people coming from different ideas and identities. The main idea which connects all these people is the concern about livelihood and dignified opportunities in and around the village. The main idea of the collective is to use art not just as a professional practice, but as a medium of expression in the ways they experience and live life in their village of Paradsinga.
The expression of the collective comes out as artworks, land arts and products made from complete organic produce. Examples of their expression are yarn artefacts built from non-GM (Genetically Modified) IPR-free (Intellectual Property Rights) non-hybrid indigenous cotton they grow, plantable seed papers, seed calendars and edible artefacts made from the organic produce from their farms. They sell these artefacts and products through their business arm Beejpaatra.
About the Founder
Shweta Bhattad and Tanmay Joshi are the initiators of the Gram Art Project. Shweta is a visual artist, a performer, and a sculptor. She has worked across mediums in the past, with a strong focus on issues of women’s safety, education, and the female body. Tanmay works in the areas of watershed management in farming, working with farmers and weavers, and developing an understanding of a collective, sustainable lifestyle.
During college, Tanmay started visiting a nearby slum in Pune to understand the challenges of youth from slums and initiate some activities around livelihood for the youth. He realized that the problem starts from a village. Most of these youth and their families migrate to cities, because they cannot find dignified livelihood in their native villages.
Realizing the root of the problem lies in villages, and identifying their common passion for art, education, and rural economy, Shweta and Tanmay decided to move back and work in Shweta’s native village Paradsinga.
Paradsinga, located in the Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh, is like any other Indian village, undergoing migration with people aspiring for jobs to escape the poverty-ridden circle of agriculture and patriarchal structures, while still trying to stick to their traditions, superstitions, and religious beliefs.
With this journey in the backdrop, they are trying to build their collective consciousness around understanding this journey, its repercussions, the vitalities and the trivialities of it and be expressive while doing it.
Growth & Impact
Stories that matter
One morning, some farmers of Paradsinga village woke up to the visuals of heavy machinery moving through their farms, destroying their crops and land. Government officials and construction authorities decided to go about the construction of a water canal without caring for the crops standing in the farms, compensating the farmers for the loss, or even consulting before beginning the work. Some farmers saw that they can mobilize with help of a young, educated couple recently moved to their village. They came together and took the actions to force the authorities to work in an accountable manner and compensate the farmers for their loss. This is just one story, not completely gone the way farmers would have wanted, but definitely ended with a little better outcome than what could have happened otherwise.
There are so many other stories. There are kids in the village who are not able to find a playground, because the only potential nearby space has open defecation and a group of gamblers occupying it. The women are suffering from their partners’ alcohol addiction. The daily wage workers are exploited with unfair wages. There are regular accidents happening because there is no speed-breaker installed on the highway that is passing from the village. People will continue suffering, but very few of these challenges will be solved or even will be talked about. Because Shweta, the co-founder of Gram art project puts it, “These are a common life, and they require the community to come together and volunteer. Volunteering requires the luxury of taking time off of personal lives and giving to the common causes.” We are not able to fight our fights because we are not able to come out of our personal struggles of livelihood and realize the importance of common action.
This is one of the big goals for the Gram Art Project, helping people realize the power of community and helping them get out of personal struggles to give time for the common causes and community life. How would we make that happen? Being in the development sector for long, Shweta and Tanmay knew very well that gathering people for meetings and sharing the importance of coming together won’t help.
Shweta and Tanmay started living in that village. They started a small enterprise of making Rakhis from locally grown, chemical-free cotton, colors, seeds, and everything, based on the idea of sustainability and decentralization. Slowly they grew this enterprise into a few more products. Now, as part of this enterprise, over 300 women, girls, boys, artists, and men are in the regular presence of Shweta and Tanmay. Now this duo has got all the time to talk with these 300 people on anything that concerns people and that needs to be changed, challenged, or understood.
And now after 6-7 years of regular conversations, small proofs of the power of community, people have started to come to Shweta-Tanmay, to come to each other for their problems. So what Tanmay and Shweta wanted all along will start happening, people coming together and volunteering to solve their common problems and lead towards a more just, sustainable, dignified life for themselves and their community.
Impact – Progress towards our goal
- Over 200 people came together to volunteer for 7-8 common causes.
- 3500 families connected to the idea of sustainability through the Rakhis, Seed papers, and organic food grains received by Gram Art
- 400 women, girls, and men from 12 villages got a dignified livelihood at the comfort of their homes and families.
- These 400 individuals and their 150 families connected with ideas of sustainability and decentralization.
Growth – Improvement of our efficiency in what we do
- Production capacity of Rakhis increased from 3000 pieces in 2017 to 60,000 in 2021, through:
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- Training of 300 women and girls for making Rakhis
- Streamlining.
- Documentation.
- Founders became relatively more freed from day-to-day operations to be able to focus on strategy and communication, through establishing clear systems.
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