Bhimduttanagar, 6th February, 2015Â : There was a time when the Rautes, supposedly ‘the King of Jungle’, used to enjoy roaming around the jungle and habituating therein.
Known to be nomadic, this indigenous group of people never resorted to any commercial activities for livelihood. Albeit few would sell their skills: the wooden utensils for income, a majority used to hunt in the wild and relish fruits and vegetable available in the jungle.
But with the increasing deforestation, the Rautes, feeling no longer safe and secured in the jungle have started to tumble out of the forest and migrate to other human settlements in pursuit of a better life.
In this course, a group of 61 Raute households, migrating from a remote mountainous rim of Mid-west to the Inner Terai of Dadheldhura, have started farming of vegetables as an alternative to the hunting for their livelihood.
Of late, almost every Raute household has started cooking vegetable for the meal. This change in their lifestyle could be attributed to their changing lifestyle and their increasing awareness in health and education among others.
Hari Singh Raut, a youth leader of the Raute community, says the Rautes who are into vegetable farming for their personal consumption are also mulling commercial farming of the same in future.
Apart from seasonal vegetables, they have also cultivated fruits like mango and banana.     Their interest into farming further fuelled when Vegetable Germplasm Promotion and Seed Production Centre, Dadheldhura provided them with vegetables’ seed and training on irrigation system, treatment of the various diseases of the plants and the like.
The elusive Rautes used to prefer yam in their meal and welcomed their guests with the same fruit. However, now-a-days they started taking a liking to consuming cooked vegetables and have started socializing with other communities too, shared Dil Bahadur Bista, Chief District Officer of Dadeldhura.
Source : RSS
