Discourses on the Graine Naine (G9) Banana at the Daranggiri Plantation Site: An Ethnographic Encounter

This paper focuses on the introduction of a hybrid breed of banana plantlet at a popular plantation site of Assam, Northeast India where indigenous cultivators in their attempt to incorporate new ‘socio-technical changes’, undertook risk as part of their social collaboration programme and started with widespread commercial monoculture. The G9 banana plantation drive at Daranggiri was indeed an aspirational team effort by the district agricultural officers, plant breeders and a few local cultivators, who aspired on bringing innovative crop practices and patterns steadily by substantiating the traditional breed of Jahaji, Malbhog and Cheni-Champa with imported G9. While the projection was at improving productivity and increasing profit-making channels; lately, the farming community started experiencing certain repercussions. These include majorly G9’s unsuitability to the local climatic conditions, inability to provide irrigated water requirements as well as the banana plantlets seasonal unavailability or its late arrival (from the company distributors via the station agricultural office) to them. The objective of this paper is to capture the nuanced complexities or layered gaps in-between the laboratory and the field by providing observations from the field itself, i.e. the Daranggiri plantation site while also contesting the claim that knowledge must be confined to the experts. Putting it succinctly, considerable skepticism and diverse opinions amongst the local communities’ customs, traditions and beliefs vis-à-vis the ‘modern’ crop practices assume greater significance. This paper is based on participant observation, in-depth personal interviews and focus group discussions. It is also important to identify the cognitive, aesthetic and social gap/s in understanding the ‘lebenswelt’ of the laboratory and of the field.