Tulsipur, Oct 28

The Badi people’s ancestral profession of making the ‘madal’, the typical Nepali musical instrument drum, is in crisis in Dang district, as the new generation has abandoned it. Gehendra Badi, a resident of Bayakhola, Tulsipur Sub-metropolitan City-4, rued that the Badi community has started forgetting their ancestral craft.

“Making madal is our ancestral profession. But these days we are forgetting it,” he said. Bhupa Bahadur Badi of the same place shared the same view as Gehendra’s. According to Bhupa, they have abandoned making madals as the demand for this musical instrument in the market has drastically reduced. “The demand for madal has dwindled in the market as people have increasingly started using various modern musical gadgets for singing and dancing. People use pen drive and other modern devices while dancing and singing, thereby making the madal obsolete,” he explained the decrease in the demand for madal.

According to him, although they make madals if someone placed the order they have given up making madals on commercial basis. Fishing also facing existential crisis Killing fish for sale is the Badi’s another profession. This is also in crisis. Gehendra Badi of Tulsipur-4 said: “We had adopted fishing as an alternative profession after it became harder for us to make ends meet due to the dwindling sale of madal.

Now, our new profession is also facing crisis. He said this alternative profession of theirs was in crisis as a growing number of people have adopted destructive fishing techniques like killing fish using electric current and releasing poison in the rivers and ponds, thereby killing large number of fish. Dhanaraj Badi of Tulsipur Sub-metropolitan City-7 said they used to catch more than five kilos of fish a day five years back. But, he added, it is even hard to catch one kilogramme fish these days.

Eking out a living has become harder for the Badi people these days as their both professions are in crisis. “We used to make a living out of making madals and catching fish in the past. But of late it is vary difficult for us to manage a square meal from both these professions,” Dhanaraj bemoaned and demanded that the government should manage employment for them in such condition.

The Badi population is more than 4,000 in the Dang district. The Badis are among the backward and deprived communities in the country. Majority of them are economically poor, are landless and survive on daily wage.