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Show Man From Indori Harriet Templer, Srxiul UNESCO Writer One day over sixty years ago, a man from Indoori, in western India, paused at the turn in the road for one more look at the almost-deserted village which had been hi.s birthplace, the home of his fathers. He was accompanied on hi.s flight by one small son; malaria, the scourge of Asia, had killed hi.s other children and his wife, and earlier two of his four brothers had died of starvation. The land was fertile enough. The villagers tilled the soil long and carefully, hoarding monsoons rain water and hauling it from storage tanks to the fields when the skies were dry. Hut when night fell, the jungle had mocked at their work. Wild pigs and bison invade their fields to eat and trample the rice and with the sunset came the dread mosquito, bringing malaria mal-aria and death. The man turned hi.s back on the village, took hi.s son by the hand and headed for Bombay. In the years that followed, the farmlands of this region of North Kanara in western India became deserted. Slowly, but inevitably, the jungle closed in. For sixty years, 65,000 acres of land, which might have produced sngar and rice and fruit lay idle while in other parts of India, the people died for want of food. Then, two years ago, the silence of the Kanara jungle was broken. Men went to work in the region, clearing the forest, digging wells, rebuilding water tanks and installing instal-ling pumps. The government of India had begun the struggle to make the Kanara jungle fruitful again. When the land was cleared, the fight against malaria began. Mosquito-breeding areas were sprayed with DDT and local health centers cen-ters were set up to provide palu-drine, palu-drine, a powerful new anti-malaria drug, for expected settlers. The India government hopes to settle at least 100,000 of its 5,000,000 displaced persons in this area. The first 35 arrivals were Sindhi refugees from the fertile wheat fields of the Indus River, an area turned over to Pakistan in, the partition. Although the Sindhis had been used to a land which needed no irrigation, they stayed in Indoori the first testimonial to the success of the project. Shortly afterwards, 15 Bombay families migrated to the reclaimed land. They found a far different Indoori In-doori from that of their fathers. The houses permanent ones are laid out in groups of 30 aroimd a quadrangle containing a playground play-ground for the children, a community com-munity well and a general meeting meet-ing place a design far different from the overcrowded villages which the older Indooris had known. There are vegetable gardens and fruit trees in the area, too, for several of the water tanks have been built large enough to supply water, not only for the rice fields, but also for growing fruits and vegetables during the winter months. The farmers are expected to raise them for their own use, and for sale in nearby towns. Up to now, vegetables have played only a small place in the diet of the people of this area, and fruits practically prac-tically none. The government has allotted a little over 10 acres of land, to each family, and has started each farm off with a pair of bullocks, a set of agricultural implements and seed and manure for the first year. Half the cost of the project is being borne by the government and the rest treated as a loan repayable repay-able in installments. In this way, the government is beginning to build a nation of independent farmers far-mers and eliminate the ancient evil of the rent collector. The government encourages the farmers to form cooperatives and to till their fields by joint-operation, so that large-scale farming may increase the yield per acre. Since the Indoori resettlement work was started, two more projects pro-jects have been undertaken and, soon, the government hopes, the entire 5.000 acres will be made available to farm families who wish to return to the land. |