Mahibul Hoque

Author

Priti David

Editor

large_01-IMG_7446-MH-In Darrang-ploughing a lonely furrow.jpg

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<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:center;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Lukor kotha nuhuniba, batot nangol nachachiba.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:center;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">[Do not listen to people, Do not smoothen the plough on the roadside]

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The above figure of speech in the Assamese language is used to describe the importance of keeping one’s attention on one’s work.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Hanif Ali, a wood craftsman who makes ploughs for farmers, says it applies to him, and his work of making precision tools for farming. Around two thirds of the land around him&nbsp;&nbsp;–&nbsp;in central Assam’s Darrang district, is under agriculture, and this veteran craftsman has an array of tools for agricultural work.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“I make all agricultural tools such as nangol [plough], chongo [bamboo ladder] juwal [yoke], haath naingle [hand-rake], naingle [rake], dheki [foot-operated pounding mill], itamagur [mallet], haarpaat [a semi-circular wooden tool attached to bamboo pole used to gather paddy into a pile after drying] and more,” he reels off.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">He prefers the wood of the jackfruit tree – called kaathol in the local Bengali dialect and kothaal in Assamese – used in making doors, windows and beds. Hanif says he cannot afford to waste any of the wood he buys and so makes as many tools as possible from each log.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Ploughs are precision tools. “I must not miss the markings on the wood even by an inch or else I may end up losing a piece,” he adds and an estimated monetary loss of Rs. 250-300.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">His customers are mostly marginal farmers from the district who have oxen at home. They multi-crop on their land, growing vegetables such as cauliflower, cabbage, eggplant, knol-khol, peas, chillies, bottlegourd, pumpkin carrots, bittergourd, tomatoes and cucumber, as well as crops of mustard and paddy.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“Anybody who needs a plough comes to me,” says the veteran craftsman now in his sixties. "About 15-10 years ago there were only two tractors in the area, and people relied on ploughs to till their land," he tells PARI.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Mukaddas Ali is a farmer in his sixties and among the few who still occasionally use a wooden plough. “I still go to Hanif to repair my plough whenever required. He is the only one who can properly adjust the damages. Like his father, he can make well finished ploughs.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Ali however says that he is not sure if he will invest in another one. “Bulls have become expensive and farm labour is not easily available, also using a plough takes much longer time than a tractor,” he adds explaining why people have shifted to tractors and power tillers to reduce the workload.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Hanif is a second-generation craftsman; he learnt the craft when he was a young child. “I went to school only for a few days. Neither my mother nor my father was interested in education, and I too didn’t want to go,” he says.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">He was very young when he started helping his father, Holu Sheikh, a respected and skilled craftsman. “Babaye shara bostir jonne nangol banaito. Nangol banabar ba thik korbar jonne angor barit aito shob khetiok [My father used to make ploughs for everyone in the village. Everyone would come to our house to make or repair their ploughs].”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">When he began helping out, his father would do the markings – precise marks essential to make the plough work without a hitch. “You must know at which exact point you have to make the holes. You must be sure that the beam is attached to the murikaath [body of the plough] at the correct angle,” Hanif says as he runs his right hand over a piece of wood he is working on.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">He explains that if the plough is too angular, nobody will buy it because then soil enters the share [cutting edge of the plough], creating a gap and slowing down work.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">It took a year before he gained enough confidence to tell his father, “I know where to mark. Don’t worry anymore.”

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">He also started to accompany his father popularly known as ‘Holu mistry’. His father would double up as shopkeeper and a huiter – a person who specialises in carpentry specifically in plough making. He recalls how they would go house to house carrying their work hung on a pole on their shoulders.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">After a few years of working with his father who was beginning to age, Hanif – the only son in the family of six – says the responsibility of his sisters’ marriage fell on him. “People already knew our house and as my father was unable to meet all the orders, I started to make ploughs.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">That was four decades ago. Today, Hanif lives alone and his home and workplace are is a single room at Number 3 Baruajhar village, home to many Bengali-origin Muslims like him. The area comes under the Dalgaon legislative assembly constituency. His one-room bamboo-thatched home is sparsely furnished with a small bed, a few cooking utensils – a pot to cook rice, a pan, a couple of steel plates and a glass.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">"My father's and my work are important to people in the locality," he says, speaking of the many farmers that are his neighbours. He is sitting in the courtyard shared by five families, also living in one-room homes like him. The other houses belong to his sister, his youngest son, and his nephews. His sister does wage work on people's farms and in their homes; his nephews often migrate to southern states.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Hanif has nine children, but none are engaged in this craft for which demand is now declining. “The younger generation will not able to recognise what a traditional plough looks like,” says Afaj Uddin, Mukaddas Ali’s nephew. The 48-year-old is a farmer with six bighas of unirrigated land stopped using a plough 15 years ago.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“When I cycle past houses with big trees with angular branches, I ask the house owner to inform me when he plans to cut the tree. I tell them that the angular and solid branches will make good ploughs,” he says, revealing his familiarity among local people.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Local timber traders also reach out to him when they have a curvy piece. He needs a seven-foot-long beam and a 3 x 2 inch wide wooden plank made of either sal (shorea robusta), shishu (Indian rosewood), titachap (Michelia champaca), shirish (albezia lebbeck) or other locally available wood.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“The tree should be 25-30 years old then the plough, yokes and rakes will last long. The logs are generally trunks or solid branches grow,” he says, showing PARI a branch he has cut into two parts.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">When PARI visited him in mid-August, he was hewing one part of the wood into the body of a plough. “If I can make two haatnaingle [wooden handrakes] apart from making the body of one plough, I may earn extra 400 -500 rupees from this log,” he says pointing towards the angular-shaped wood bought for Rs. 200.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“I must utilize as many parts as possible from each wood. Not just that, the shape has to be exactly what the farmers require,” he adds. Over the four decades and more that he has been doing this, he knows the most popular size for a plough is 18-inch shoes (to stabilise the plough) and a 33-inch body.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Once he gets the perfect piece of wood, he starts work before the sun rises, placing his tools for axing, chopping, shaping, and curving nearby. He also has a few chisels, an adze, a couple of saws, an axe, a hand plane, and a few rusting rods which he keeps on an elevated wooden platform at home.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Using the plain side of the saw, he marks the lines on the wood to make precise cuts. He measures the distance with his hand. Once the markings are done, he slices the sides of the wood with his 30-year-old axe. “Then I use tessha [adze tool similar to an axe] to shave off the uneven surface,” the master woodworker says. The nangol or the shoe-part of the body has to be precisely curved in a way that makes the soil move to either side easily.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“The starting point of the shoes [the part of the body that glides on the ground] remains around six inches, it gradually decreases to 1.5 to 2 inches towards the end in width,” he says. The shoes’ thickness should be 8 or 9 inches tapering to two inches towards the end where it is nailed into the wood.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The shoe-share is called faal or pal and is made of an iron bar around 9-12 inches in length and 1.5-2 inches wide, with sharp edges on both ends. “Both the edges are sharp, because if one end gets corroded, the farmer can switch to the other end.” Hanif sources the metal work from local blacksmiths in Bechimari market, around three kilometres from his home.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">It takes at least five hours of continuous pounding of axe and adze to chop and shave the sides of a log into shape. It must then be smoothened with a hand plane.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">When the body is ready, the huiter makes a precise mark to make a whole where the beam of the plough has to fit. Hanif says, “the hole has to be as close as possible to the size of the eesh [the wooden beam], because it must not loosen up while ploughing. It is generally 1.5 or 2 inches wide.”

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">To adjust the height of the plough Hanif makes five to six hitches near the top end of the beam. Using these hitches, the farmers used to adjust the plough to their requirement of how deep they wanted to till the soil.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Cutting the wood with a saw machine is expensive and tiring says Hanif. “If I buy a log for 200 rupees, I pay another 150 to the cutting person.” Finishing the plough takes around two days and can, at best, sell one plough for Rs. 1,200.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">While some people approach him directly, Hanif also travels to two weekly markets in Darrang district – Lalpool bazaar and Bechimari bazaar – to sell his products. “A farmer has to pay around 3,500 to 3,700 rupees for the plough and its accessories,” he says pointing out the steep costs that have reduced his buyers to those renting out their ploughs and the odd farmer. “Tractors have replaced the traditional method of tilling.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">But Hanif is not stopping. The next day he readies his bicycle with his work – a plough body and a kuthi (handle of the plough). “When tractors finish damaging the soil… people will come back to the plough maker,” he adds.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).

In Darrang: ploughing a lonely furrow

दरांगचे हनीफ अली आणि त्यांचे अखेरचे काही नांगर

ٹریکٹروں نے چھینا ہل بنانے والوں کا روزگار

दर्रांग के अकेल्ला नांगर बनेइय्या

ट्रैक्टर आइल, हल कारीगर के रोटी छीनाइल

ଦାରଙ୍ଗ: ନିଃସଙ୍ଗ ଜମିରେ ହଳ ବୁଲେଇବା

தனியாக உழும் பணி

ਦਰਾਂਗ: ਹਲ ਦਾ ਚਲਣ ਵਾਪਸ ਆਵੇਗਾ

ദരംഗയിൽ: ഉഴവുചാലിൽ കലപ്പയുന്തുമ്പോൾ

ದರಾಂಗ್:‌ ಒಂಟಿ ಹೊಲದ ಉಳುಮೆ

ट्रैक्टरों ने छीना हल-निर्माताओं का रोज़गार 

দারাং: একার হাতে চলছে লাঙল 

దరంగ్‌లో ఒకే ఒక నాగలి రూపకర్త

দৰঙত নাঙল-যুৱলিৰ সপোন দেখা এজন সূতাৰ 

દારંગમાં હળ બનાવવાની વિસરાતી જતી કળા

Dalgaon (Pt), Darrang District, Assam, India

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In Darrang: ploughing a lonely furrow

Hanif Ali crafts wooden ploughs and an array of farming implements such as rakes, yokes, mallets and more. The veteran craftsman of precision tools says the growing preference for tractors has dented demand

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