Basant Utsav 2021

Every February for the past few years, Agro Society, a Community Driven Initiative, has organised a Basant Utsav. The overall theme is to celebrate and champion green initiatives.

This year Basant Utsav 2021 was hosted on Valentine's Day, and it provided:

• guided tours of the butterfly garden with a commentary on the butterfly larval and nectar host plants

• guided tours of the vegetable garden patch and familiarisation with different plants

• an opportunity to expose kids and adults to nature

• food stalls and organic produce sellers who rented space to sell their wares, providing visibility to local resident entrepreneurs

• a platform for kids to showcase their talents with skits and performances

• hobby workshops like stone-painting

• organic vegetables and produce on sale

• plant saplings for purchase

There was a nominal entry charge of Rs 120 to cover organisational costs.

Overall a unique way to spend a day in the cradle of nature and an inspiration in terms of what communities can strive to achieve if they bring their collective energies to bear on issues that affect our environment and thereby our quality of life.

A brief history...

Tucked away under a span of high-tension cables and the electricity pylons that support them, lies a stretch of land transformed by a community-driven initiative called Sector 9 Agro Society.

Once beseiged by slum-land grabbers and indiscriminate debris-dumping. Salvaged by a group of citizens who started a Nana-Nani park to preserve this parcel of land as a green lung.

Cidco (the land use authority for Navi Mumbai) tacitly approved the community initiative assigning non-permanent land-use rights to stem the land-grab and debris dumping.

Of this stretch, two parcels were at one time assigned to private management and continue to be under the control of two local families who cultivate it or let the wild bush propogate and generally preserve the status quo.

The remaining third parcel is managed by the community-driven initiative of Agro Garden society. Apparently promoted by a Mr Pandey who was joined by a Mr Bhagwat, Lepidopterologist (Butterfly specialist) and Botanist. These gentlemen seem to have marshalled a group of surrounding residents to their green cause.

Dr Bhagwat was the driving force behind the butterfly garden, which is exactly one half of Agro Garden, being built on the previous debris dump ground. This boasts a multitude of nectar and larval hosts which are grown to boost butterflies. The model of development depends on resident volunteers who dig, landscape, water, weed, plant, prune and maintain the lay of the land. And how it has flowered!

The other half of Agro Garden is cultivated as a vegetable garden. Carrots, Radish, Spinach, Cauliflower, Bottle Gourd, Beans, Tomatoes, Bananas were growing in abundance today. The crops are dictated by a seasonal plan of crop-rotation which is also managed by resident volunteers.

The plot hosts an elderly Maratha 'Mama', who lives thereon and cultivates it. The produce is sold on premises every Saturday and Tuesday, and is fully organic - no pesticides employed. I've personally used the Spinach, freshly plucked, and noted that is was incomparably springier compared to the stuff we buy off the local markets. An indicator of how stale our veggies get on the journey from farm to table. The bananas, if green, take a good week to ripen, also an indicator that the one's we buy from the market are ripened with carcinogenic chemical sprays (they turn ripe overnight if you noticed, highly unnatural).

The sale proceeds are used to employ the Mama, his helper and buy the needed seeds and upkeep. A nominal entry fee keeps miscreants and vandals at bay and also promotes respect for htis shared resource.

Around 2018, the adjoining rowhouse society of Sector 9 North, encroached on the fag-end of the butterfly garden -- as a measure to resolve their own parking woes -- what with every family having multiple cars, they needed the space badly. They saw it as wild brush land adjoining their property and proceeded to clear it and make a car park. But it was really ground for larval host plants for butterflies. Unfortunately as there is no permanent legal assignment of land rights to the Agro Society, CIDCO appeared to have tacitly accepted the encroachment for the parking lot as from their point of view it was still preventing debris-dumping or land grab. So although a piece of land was lost to the parking lot, the Agro Garden then moved speedily to clear the remaining debris and fence the garden to prevent further encroachment. The net result is that the butterfly garden is flowering now better than ever and its surroundings have witnessed a significant increase in butterfly and bee population since its inception.