Follow the Sheep

Find a good shepherd. Follow the black Sheep.

Follow the Sheep project involves following shepherds and their (mostly black) sheep, in the Deccan areas of Karnataka and Andra Pradesh. Shepherds are non-literate in general. And the nomadic shepherds travel about 400 kms over a range of 6 to 8 months with their herds. They are in small groups of 3-8 family members. Every few days they migrate to another location that can feed their sheep. When in a location, they are often in a farmers land after having negotiated a trade for feed in return to the sheep manure (night droppings). During the day they can graze part of the farm (as per negotiation) and take the sheep to other grazing areas which are often common property reserves, and to areas where there is a water body. Most shepherds have mobile phones and horses or donkeys (and camels as we go north). They use these phones, when there is signal, to talk to people back home, and sometimes to coordinate shepherding activity.

The goals of the project

• work with them to envision and deploy smart phone applications for their needs
• collect track information (possibly for nomadic rights)
• land use information (possibly for smarter apps in future)

Collaborating with Mitan and Socionity iiit-h.

Also see Follow the Sheep. If you are interested in following the sheep please register your self at http://mitan.in/followsheep and you will be sent a notification when a shepherd group comes near you. Also of interest is the idea of Bio-Cultural protocols for communities who live with animals and forests. Raika is a camel herders community. See what they say about how they live at http://mitan.in/bcp/raika and also see how [Alipi] helps in provisioning narratives of this document that is in English to other contexts.