A Man For All Seasons

Manoj Kumar is the man behind the growing fame of Araku as a world class coffee from India. But the story behind how he marshalled 100,000 adivasi farmers to create the world’s largest small farm-based organic coffee plantation surrounded by 23 million newly-planted trees in a Naxal-blighted corner of Andhra Pradesh, is an even more inspiring one

- Murali K Menon and Kashmeera Sambamurthy

In mid-June this year, Manoj Kumar tweeted: “Writing is a very lonely voyage that needs a lot of space and quiet. I am learning this the hard way as I attempt writing the story of @ arakucoffeein (the voyage may well be lifelong).” The story of coffee grown by adivasi farmers in the eponymous Araku valley in northeastern Andhra Pradesh achieving global acclaim has been told often in the last six-odd months, but no one will quite tell the way Kumar will. After all, in it will be largely his own story.

It is a story that he does not tire of retelling, as we found out on a muggy Mumbai evening not long ago. He calls Araku Valley a 'mystical' place, not just because of its stunning greenery, but also its unique status as a notified tribal area. "There is very little an outsider can do here,'' he says, “Nobody can own any land, not even the adivasis living here. But they can farm anywhere they want, grow anything they wish, and live any place they choose. It is after all their land. But they can never mortgage or sell the land or pass it on to their descendants.”

For Kumar, though, the restrictions presented the opportunity that he was looking for as a social entrepreneur --- a chance to creatively help thousands of women and men in an extremely poor part of the country work towards improving their lives using their own natural resources, while simultaneously creating something long lasting that they would be proud of.