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Support price for ‘bhutti’ increased

KORAPUT: The support price for ‘bhutti’, the labour done in a fellow villager’s field has been fixed at Rs20 and for using a plough at Rs25 for this year in Umuri village of Koraput block . At a meeting held in the village the villagers decided to raise the price from Rs.15 per day, Dhruba Choudhury, an old man in the village, said.

This has been the practice of the tribal community for a long time. No agreements are made and no formal declarations are made to sign.

There were no government officials or the PRI members to fix the support price .They were all the villagers gathered at the central place. It was an annual event and everything rests in the word for which all the villagers pay respect, he said. After the rate was fixed no one in the village is allowed to pay anything more or less than this rate against Bhutti .

The price for all types of work in the field, like plucking grass, showing seeds or digging soil remains the same under this system. One can hire any number of people from the village for his work . However no one is forced to do the work and is free to decide on his own.

Though there were no strict guidelines to follow there has been no conflict over this issue and almost everyone who was chosen for the work had accepted the responsibility with joy for the day . As per the practice, everyone in the village shares his labour in the field of others for their interdependency to live together, Anand Mali, another villager said . It’s a collective work on the basis of "You do for me , I do for you" principle, he added.

This sharing of labour is not confined to one village or its villagers . People from the neighbouring villages could also be hired for the purpose. Only those villages who share each other’s boundaries can involve in this process of sharing. People from the neighbouring village Pondy would be reaching the village next week to share their labour , he added. However with the increase of labour wages by the Government this practice of sharing each other’s responsibility is facing new challenges

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