FIELD REPORT: Totopara Tribe of North Bengal 

By Siddhant Pasricha 

Digital Empowerment Foundation is implementing a project in Totopara, West Bengal. Under this project, DEF plans to provide hyper-local digital infrastructure with reliable internet access so that community members can have reliable internet access. This will be followed by training on using the internet meaningfully so that they can share different elements of their culture online and play an active role in influencing their online representation. The broader objective of the project is to create diverse internet that represents different communities, languages, and cultures. Within this context, the team at DEF, Dhiraj and Siddhant, went to explore the ground realities at Totopara.

Toto tribes are one of the smallest tribal groups in the world with a population of just about 1,670. The Government of India has declared them as one of the 75 particularly vulnerable groups among the 750 tribal communities of India. The Toto tribes live in the Totopara village, Alipurduar District of West Bengal, near the Indo-Bhutan Border. Totopara village falls right on the banks of Torsha river which actually crosses the village from two sides of the village. The village has been historically secluded from the rest of India due to poor infrastructural development. The community lives 24 km away from the nearest market, Madarihat.

Travelling to the Madarihat takes one hour, requires crossing six rivers, and costs around 0.5 USD (INR 50) per side on a bus. It becomes especially challenging to cross these rivers during monsoon when the river is flooded. During our visit to Totopara, we got to experience these flash floods as a result of which we couldn’t cross the river for several hours. These flash floods make it difficult for individuals to visit the village, cutting off the community from the rest of the country and neighbourhood. 

Within this context, a team from Digital Empowerment Foundation, including Pankaj Sharma, Atanu Sarkar, and Aamir Rahman, visited Totopara to understand the connectivity challenges faced by the Toto Tribes and the different approaches that can be used to address the same.

Internet Connectivity: Totopara has intermittent access to the internet. Two towers in the village claim to provide 4G internet in the village belong to AirTel and Jio each. Individuals have to move around the village, often closer to the towers to access the internet. This becomes difficult during emergencies such as floods and landslides or when it gets dark. Due to these factors, the community members are not able to use the internet reliably. There is no meaningful connectivity in Totopara, and there is no reliable Internet either.

Internet Usage Patterns: The community members reported that they have general knowledge about using mobile phones, social media websites, and gaming. They learnt to use this by observing others around them with a mobile phone. However, their digital literacy is limited to using a mobile only. They do not know how to use a computer – when asked if they can use the computer, the community members stated that they know how to click using a mouse and use MS Paint. 

In case someone wants to learn how to use a computer, they have to travel to Madarihat, pay and sign up for a course, and attend classes regularly.  The members also shared that at present, only two members in the community own a computer – one of them is working towards uploading the different elements of Toto Culture such as songs - cultural and traditional songs on YouTube. 

Availing Government Schemes and Services: Since the community members have limited knowledge about using the Internet, they are not able to apply for the government schemes and services themselves and as a result they are dependent on the external members. These include the panchayat office and a cyber-café in Madarihat. The community members distinguish between going to either of the centres as follows:

1. Panchayat Office – The residents mentioned that they usually visited the Panchayat Office when they wanted to avail a government service such as registering for a voter card. The members started using the panchayat office for this as it was located close to Totopara and provided services free of cost. However, they also complained that the service was very slow and that it was only used in situations where there was no urgency. During our FGD, one of the respondents mentioned that they applied for an election card two months before the elections, however the process took so long that they didn’t receive their Voting card even after the election results were announced!

2. Cyber-Café – Contrary to the panchayat office, the respondents state that the biggest advantage of going to the cyber-café was that the services were provided very quickly and the average time between applying for a service and availing its benefit was less than 20 days. However, despite these advantages, the community members did not prefer going to the cyber-café as it required travelling to Madarihat and cost more money, besides no less than 3 hours for a round trip.

Indigenous Culture: During in-depth interviews, one respondent mentioned that one of the challenges they are facing currently is the erasure of the Toto culture including their language, oral history, clothing, lifestyle, habits, rituals, and other elements that make their culture unique. One of the factors behind this is the increasing interaction of the community members with the outside world. One of the respondents shared that potato is referred to as ‘bekaru’ in the Toto language, earlier people found an advantage in learning this. Now if someone goes to the market and says ‘bekaru’, no one would understand what it means. Due to this, the community members have themselves stopped learning the Toto language. While a YouTuber is working towards digitising different elements of Toto culture, more effort is needed towards digitising and storing the Toto culture so that it can be shared with the rest of the world.

Toto - the tribes’ language, culture and code: Totos are a unique tribe, close to nature, nature worshipers and also speak their own unique non-script language. According to Wikipedia, “Toto is listed as a critically endangered language by UNESCO, with perhaps 1,000 speakers.^[3] However, most families in the community speak Toto at home. Most children learn Toto at home, although they use Bengali in school.” However, “An alphabetic script developed for the language by community elder and author, Dhaniram Toto, was published in 2015, and has seen limited but increasing use in literature, education, and computing; most significantly, the Toto alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in September, 2021. Prior to the publication of this script, Dhaniram Toto and other members of the community (whose literacy rate as per sample survey carried out in 2003 was just 33.64 per cent) penned books and poems in the Bengali script.”

It seems that one of the major digital initiative that would be required in the area is to digitally convert and preserve the culture, heritage, art and social lives of Toto tribes through their oral practising language.

Narratives surrounding Toto tribes: Similarly, the community members mentioned that they feel they have no control over the different narratives that surround the Toto community. During FGD, one of the respondents mentioned an instance where a cab driver got a few tourists to show them Totopara. While they were travelling, the cab driver started creating a particular image about how toto tribes look – they are very short in height, they only wear traditional clothes, and they are very healthy. Within this context, the tourists visited the village and when they saw individuals from Toto tribes, they were disappointed to see that they looked just like any other fellow villagers.

In such instances, it becomes important for the community to take ownership of the narratives about them. It is interesting to note that if one searched Totopara on the Internet, there is a Wikipedia page, and several digital footprints on google map - such as “Old Totopara”, “Viewpoints in Totopara”, “Lodges and Homestays in Totopara”, “Mountain Views”, “Schools”, “PHCs and Hospitals”, some “mining spots”, “Churches”, etc, however, most of these narratives are created by outsiders. Similarly, academic research on the Toto community reduces their identity to merely subsistence farming, low educational rates, and social isolation. Therefore, it is necessary to give the community with the essential tools needed to take control of the narratives surrounding the community. 

For some additional context and information, here are two of the rather scarce articles written in english about the toto community and the village - one mostly photographs, and another a piece written just before the elections this year where the community hopes to voice their concerns.

Photos | Totos of Totopara: Glimpses of an endangered tribe

The Toto tribe of West Bengal lives in a remote village near the border with Bhutan. They are one of the most endangered tribes in the world, with just over 1,600 members surviving. Younger generations strive to maintain a balance between the world of their elders and the world of today. Some use their Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts to talk about their unique culture. Abhijit AA, a photojournalist and former communications executive, spent five years documenting the Toto tribe’s way of life. In April 2022, he published his work as a photobook called Totos of Totopara: An Indigenous Tribe in a Globalised World. here are a few glimpses from the book.

hindustantimes.com

‘We exist’: A Himayalan hamlet, forgotten by Indian democracy

As India braces for elections, the Totos, one of the world’s smallest tribes, have little hope that they’ll be heard.

aljazeera.com

Other News: What we are reading

In the latest 'trending' scam that has even got the country's prime minister to make a press statement, scamsters pose (and even come dressed up) as police officers to convince and place the victim in 'digital arrest,' threatening them with worse consequences, and then siphon off their bank accounts either as charges or as a bribe.

We have been following some of the NREGA payment issues along with our friends at MKSS and other organisations, and this is a more recent development that adds to the several standing evidences on the systematic dismantling of the system- after digitising attendance and payments, leaving several without pay at all, the fund cuts (most of them resulting from the annual union budget) has taken a serious toll. The second news piece is the center defending its policy to link the aadhaar, despite several objections.

The following is a front page news in Rajasthan Patrika how in Rajasthan 100s of people declared dead and their pension blocked; and now people are agitating that “they are alive”

As more media move online, helping improve reach and cut costs, an entire history of print culture changes - this is the latest in line, the current oldest bangla daily in north east India which has shut down.

Ten years after Corporate Social Responsibility was mandated into the companies act, this article in TheHindu examines why it is in need of reforms.

And in other interesting news clippings pertaining to the digital world:

DEF Updates

This month, DEF is focused on our 2024 edition of the Digital Citizen Summit, happening at T-HUB in Hyderabad. Although applications for events are closed, one can still register and attend the event, using the link below.

Thanks for reading, we will be back next week, just in time for our 6th DCS event!