Community Wellbeing

Community wellbeing: A layman’s perspectives on its parameters-Social, economic, environmental and cultural aspects.

(A case of Phagchok community)

Tashi Dendup

Hawk's eye view of Phagchok
P.C. Facebook page of Phagchok

Introduction

 Community wellbeing arises from wide range of attributing parameters. Public health researchers Wiseman and Brasher has given an inclusive and comprehensive definition, “community wellbeing is the combination of social, economic, environmental, cultural, and political conditions identified by individuals and their communities as essential for them to flourish and fulfill their potential”. According to some scholarly literatures, when we look at community as a whole, we find three attributes that play a large role in wellbeing: connectedness, livability and equity.

      The pillars and domains of Gross National Happiness also checks the wellbeing of community as it takes care of the parameters mentioned in the definition of Wiseman and Brasher. The holistic development gauge of Bhutan GNH not only looks for the economic prospects as a growth and development of the country, but also considers the spiritual wellbeing. On the similar note, sustainable development is also highly regarded for its holistic pillars to measure and gauge the long-term development.

      Phagchok is one of the remotest villages nestled on the hilltop of country’s extreme most south-east sharing boundary with Arunachal Pradesh, India. With only 16 permanent households, it has few hundreds of population with predominance of religious personals and monks forming the strong Buddhist community. It has a sloppy landscape upon which the agrarian survives on subsistence farming. The recent rural electricity scheme has lighten up the lives of people which otherwise would heavily depend on the firewood and kerosene for the household use. Giving this quick view of the community’s rear picture, the essay attempts to introduce its state of wellbeing through the conditions of social, economic, environmental, cultural, and political aspects of the village.

Social

Relatively a small community is easy to govern and can maintain a good community vitality. There has always been good social cohesion among the people. This can be attributed to the blood relation of almost 70% of the population, they are in one way or other the family of one blood which got scattered into separate roofs as extended family is not so common in our community. Over the last three decades, the community enjoyed the full blessings and merits under the spiritual guidance of Yonphu Choejue Dhungjue lineage. His Holiness late Meymey Lama Rinpoche has built a sacred temple around 1973, to this day the temple has not only served the spiritual purposes but also function as a community center for all sorts of meetings and gatherings.

      Access to education and health services are very important for the community wellbeing. Even before the modern education, our children had access to monastic education instituted by H.H Meymey Lama Rinpoche. More formal institution of monastic education is instated with inaugural ceremony by H.H Garab Rinpoche in 2014.  With establishment of schools, we have achieved 100% enrollment of children in school as required in our national education policy.  Health service units are also within the reach of walking distance of our community which ensured good health of women and children. Sick people can have access to health services and avail medicine as and when needed. This has decreased morbidity and mortality rate of our community though no proper empirical statistics are available.

      The social and customary services are one among many to look at the connectedness and social bond in our country. To mention few, clearing of the mule track, renovation of community infrastructures and taking part in public functions are where people get to discuss and plan the development agendas of the community. However, despite the importance of the functions, lately there have been few cases of people not taking it seriously, thus inviting unhealthy social consequences. Instead of healthy debates in such gathering, it sometimes becomes chaotic scene when penalties are imposed on defaulters. Making personal accusations and verbal threats are exchanged in community gatherings which I find is a natural way of dealing when it involves the mass.

      My community however has a good culture of helping each other in times of need. Let alone sick and death of any people, we have a wonderful culture of paying condolences and showing sincere sympathy to the owner when their livestock are sick or death. Shon Gothpey in our term is equivalent to paying condolences to the families of victim be it human or animals. In this way, community remains connected both in heyday and difficult times. Harmonious social ties are also evident through the unique culture of Gadhang Lengnang, a culture of labour exchange with no monetary involvement to hire labour for any sorts of work. However, this local culture is on the brinks of lost to the increasing demand on paper economy.

Economy

When we discuss about wellbeing, economy is one among few inevitable factors to be considered. The community does a subsistence farming which hardly meets the household demand for food and other necessities. Inaccessibility is a cause of poverty, however at times it proves to be blessing in disguise. Blessing in disguise as it allows people to think out of box and become innovative and initiative at times to produce what they want. The village being within the proximity of Indian boarder, people had been heavily dependent on them starting from rice to vegetables.

      Over the years the arable land had been deserted resorting to other off-farm activities for income to cover the daily expenses. Other than few hundreds of mandarin trees, people don’t have any other major cash crops. This poses threats to the community economy during the times of complete mandarin failure as it did a couple of years ago. Livestock production is almost negligible which is one of the economic backbones elsewhere; this is because people lack interest due to religious sentiments and man power shortage to do livestock farming. The rich forest has also provided wide range of non-timber forest products like wild vegetables, yam, fruits, shoots and tubers which people sell it to local market. It has been one alternate source for income to the people. Despite many economic drawbacks people find alternative income generating activities like porter pony and manual labour works in development projects and earn daily wages. These are however a short term solution and sustainability is a big question with increasing population and rising food prices.

      Recently, Regional office for agriculture research and development center of Mongar has provided people with some fruit trees which have good economic value. I see some light in this project as it can be a good cash crop for the people in coming years. Some of them have also started small scale cardamom plantation which has good economic prospects as of now. The rays of hope are seen as people have started switching to some new economic activities as a value addition to their subsistence agriculture farming. Vegetable production in small scale promises a good prospect in the community, thus if people put in interest and effort people can make a good income through this venture.

Environment

 Environment encompasses land, water, air and forest which are the preconditions for a harmonious and prosperous society. Almost all rural communities in our country enjoy healthy and fresh air which supports lives of people and plant species alike.  Land is one single important inelastic asset which we must use it productively considering the fact that about only 7% of total area is arable in our country. We have small portion of fertile land with major pie of its share featured with rugged and stiff terrain which are still under people’s ownership. Over the years people have left the land barren with only patch of it cultivated with few varieties of crops. This has led to regeneration of vegetations turning into thick bushes which would incur heavy labour and cost to convert it back for cultivation in near future. Land degradation is also a concern of the community given the unsustainable falling of the trees and vegetations as firewood on sloppy and fragile areas.

      Water the lifeline of the community is one of the scarce resources at Phagchok. The nature of the landscape itself limits easy access to adequate water as the village is located on top of the hill. This is further worsened with poor watershed management at its source. The mountain being sole source of timber and other resources, for past many years there had been unsustainable logging and clearing of vegetation for livestock grazing and the harvesting of wild foods. This has led to drying up of all water sources which used to be the perennial source of water to the community in olden days. There used to be at least three spring water sources in our community (HakarJab, Regangnang and Reshhor) which are no more a source of water for people and animals now. Its catchment areas are being destroyed irresponsibly despite traditional belief of ill-consequences of destroying water heads. This has increased the competition of animals and people for water from same tap and tanks which exacerbate the situation even more.

      The powerhouse of many rural communities is the forest which are intake and resourceful. From the age immemorial, people were heavily dependent on forest for building materials, food resources, medicinal herbs, and many more. Given easy accessibility and availability to forest resources, unsustainable consumption of the forest products caused major threats to forest exploitation, land degradation, watershed destruction putting people’s livelihood on line. Extensive logging and falling of trees for firewood is two most threats to fragile land, watershed and people’s livelihood in the community.

Culture and tradition

 Culture and tradition are the identity of the community in question and it is an indigenous norm that governs the system and lifestyle of the particular place. It guides the people and community for peaceful and orderly co-existence within and outside the given community. We have rich culture and tradition which are amongst our top priorities in the community. Religious tradition and communal culture have built the peace, prosperity and happiness of our small village. Indigenous knowledge and cultural heritages are well preserved and promoted under the excellent leadership and guidance of lama Rinpoche (Lineage of Yonphu Cheoje Dhunjue) for past four decades.

      Religious functions like annual tshechu and rituals are still in practice to ensure the wellbeing of all sentient beings and protect the harmonious community. Performing arts and other intangible cultural preservation are practiced undeterred and upheld prominently. However, due to lack of financial support and human resource, some cultures of performing arts like Achhe Lhamo Chham are in decline and can be heard and read only in papers if left without due attention for its preservation and promotion. Traditional social events like celebration of different losars and auspicious days are still vibrantly practiced and given due importance. Lamchhang and Tshogchang are one salient features of the community which have been in practiced and still in practice giving good reception and farewell to the incoming and outgoing people to our community.

      However, the modernization and more exposure to outside world has brought in some western cultures and practices which somehow imposes threats to the existing age old culture of the home. One such example is gambling business during religious functions which diverts people from attending and witnessing the traditional events. People are found engaging in such illicit activities diluting the meaning and auspiciousness of the religious events and performance. This can however be stopped with implementation of government laws and stringent monitoring by the organizers of such events. In a nutshell, one can proudly claim that we still have our age old culture and tradition intact and it is well preserved. Having said this, one must give top priorities to our culture and tradition for its sustainability for the benefit of all of us.

Conclusion and recommendations

As far as these four parameters of community wellbeing are concerned, Phagchok can be rated as having good community wellbeing. With strong social cohesion, middling economic prosperity, healthy environmental situation and intact preservation and promotion of age old culture and tradition the community celebrates vibrant and harmonious lives. Relatively, our community enjoys better accessibility to monastic and modern education, health services and lately introduced to modern inevitable amenities like road infrastructures and electricity.

      However, much can be achieved in terms of economic wellbeing and environmental preservation to ensure its sustainability and inherit it to our coming generations. It is not so difficult to inculcate and introduce some modern strategies intertwined with traditional knowledge to usher more vibrant and harmonious society. I am saying this because we are in right place and time to act upon betterment of our economic status, environmental wellbeing, social relationship and cultural preservation.

      Having experienced and heard many good examples from across the world, I must state few goodwill recommendations for the furtherance of community wellbeing.  Instituting community forest can not only help preserve our forest, it can enable better and equitable benefit sharing among households in the community from the forest resources. Formation of farmers’ cooperative groups for vegetable production can create better income source to improve people’s living standard. The indigenous cereal crops are at the verge of lost with time, this can be preserved through revival farming practice for the community food security. The community in collaboration with geog extension offices and other relevant agencies can work more for the better community well being.

Disclaimer: Except for the few definitions in introduction, all other mentions are author’s own perspectives and interpretations. The essay being author’s sole perspective does not necessarily represent community’s opinion.