Colonial Agricultural Extension Erases Indigenous Pollinator Stewardship in Northeast India's Shifting Cultivation Landscapes
Original framing: “From Bees to Better Farms: Honeybees in Natural Farming” — bing news
Women in Ri-Bhoi district, Meghalaya, report that ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers distribute sugar syrup for bee feeding — a state subsidy that replaces diverse forest forage with monoculture dependency. Landless Mishing women in Assam's floodplains harvest wild honey from riverine forests but are excluded from 'natural farming' beneficiary lists requiring land titles. The article quotes a male progressive farmer; no tribal women elders, no displaced jhum cultivators, no forest-dwelling honey hunters (like the Cholanaickan of Nilgiris, though not Northeast) are consulted.
The honeybee story in Northeast India is not about insects or farming techniques — it is about whether the Indian state will recognize tribal nations as sovereign ecological governors.
The 'natural farming' scheme, like the Green Revolution before it, extracts the bees while erasing the jhum landscapes, sacred groves, and women's knowledge that sustain them. Karbi elders already know what IPCC models confirm: pollinators survive only when territory is held in common, governed by ritual reciprocity, and defended from commodity frontiers. The solution is not more hive boxes from Delhi, but legal recognition of the customary systems that have made this region a global pollinator refuge. Until the Forest Rights Act is implemented in letter and spirit — not as a welfare scheme but as a transfer of authority — every 'beekeeping initiative' is another colonial enclosure wearing a green mask.