Transversing through a solitary voice to diverse systems

Susanna Korah

LA4012

Over time when the land started to convert to an agrarian landscape, farmers and pastoral communities started developing a sense of unspoken relationship where the pastoral community started using the agrarian land for pasture after the cultivation, this relationship is seen in the outskirts of Vadodara by the identified pastoral community ‘Bharwad’ who keeps migrating from Bhavnagar to Vadodara. As the community started to settle down in the city and eventually the ethnic group faced several pressures, the occupation started to shift. As the ethnic group faces extinction peaks, the study looks through the lens that re-imagines the community in today’s system.

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Notion of common - ‘Cries of unspoken walls’| Commons giving rise to multiple shadows of systems but yet over time being privatized to one shadow of a unified system.

Narrating commons| Tracing the ethnic group of pastoral community (Bharwad pastoral community)

Living the past - Temporality of migrating Bharwad pastoral community in the precinct of Sadhi village

Precinct 1 - Temporal dependency| Natural habitat| stakeholder - Bharwad community | Their sense of belonging to the small patches of untouched green buffers and shallow water systems

Precinct 2 - Temporal dependency | Arable agricultural land | Stakeholder - Indigenous species of cattle herd owned by the Bharwad pastoral community and their use of the agrarian land | Sustainable cycle of exchange of resources

Living the present - Persistence of the Bharwad community identified in the hidden fringes of the city | To understand the precinct in 2km radius | Accessibility to different commons and understanding the available pastoral grounds – due to which the community changes its occupation

Precinct - Adapting to micro - Cosmo of systems | Bharwad pastoral community is surrounded by other systems and communities | To understand different stages through which the precinct evolved |How different communities and their systems lost their commons through the process | Breakage in the water systems

Design strategy - Re-imagining commons | To bring back the lost commons and to re-imagine the pastoral community in the present systems which later cater to bring other stakeholders to the identified zones

Design strategy - Re-imagining Bharwad community in the present system | Multi - purposing the land for a sustainable cycle | one patch as arable agrarian land by reviving the forgotten water system | Green path which becomes cattle friendly as well as a bioswale that recharge the water systems | Break the walls of gardens – access to all community

Questioning the system that we are living in where the commons don’t have a place, the community who uses the commons are banished for as the common that once served the purpose of multiple systems serves only one purpose. Who belongs where?