Artist-in-Residence, Parivartan (Siwan)

Fieldwork, community environments and rural public-space inquiry

Parivartan is a rural development initiative in Siwan, Bihar, working across more than 36 villages in the region. Through programmes in education, agriculture, women’s empowerment, youth development, community arts, and sustainable livelihoods, it creates enabling ecosystems for rural communities to imagine and build their own futures. As the first Artist-in-Residence at Parivartan, my fieldwork began at the weekly Bazaar located just outside the campus where I lived. The Bazaar became an initial entry point into the region’s everyday life - a dense site of exchange where food, labour, social hierarchies, gendered roles, and informal interactions unfold side by side.

Fieldwork & Expanding Scope

Starting from the Bazaar, the research rapidly widened. What began as observing a single public space soon expanded into a cluster of over 36 villages, each with distinct patterns of nutrition, agriculture, labour, and social organisation. Through conversations, household visits, agricultural fields, and everyday interactions, I traced the nutritional landscape of the region: how food is grown, purchased, traded, stored, and valued. Nutrition was not simply biological. It was infrastructural, cultural, shaped by economic constraints, and deeply entangled with caste, gender, and geography.

Observations from the Field

During the residency, several strong patterns emerged - not always spoken openly, but visible in practice.

A. Caste & Agricultural Labour

Across multiple villages, I observed that certain crops — especially vegetables — were grown predominantly by farmers from particular caste groups. While not always stated directly, vegetable cultivation seemed to carry social coding, where some communities considered it “appropriate” or “expected” for specific castes. This influenced:

• what crops were grown

• who grew them

• who sold them

• and how agricultural identity was formed.

It shaped not only nutrition and market availability, but also how labour was valued and distributed.

(This reflects broader agrarian patterns in Bihar, where caste continues to influence landholding, crop choice, and labour roles.) 

B. Gendered Public Space

Public environments - tea stalls, markets, open seating areas - were overwhelmingly male spaces.

Women’s presence was limited, often shaped by mobility restrictions, household responsibilities, and social expectations. This gendering of public space affected:

• who participates in community dialogue

• who accesses information

• who negotiates prices and markets

• and who occupies visible space in the village’s public life

These everyday dynamics significantly shaped the region’s nutritional and social landscape.

Public Space as Community Method

Given my focus on public space, the residency naturally developed toward a spatial, community-driven intervention. Working with Parivartan’s agriculture wing, I proposed a community kitchen garden for a government school ground -  selected for its accessibility and its symbolic position within the village.

The project, titled “Ganga Maa Mandal,” aimed to create:

•  a functional nutri-garden

• a community learning space

• a shared environment where students could understand food cycles

• a public-realm intervention that linked ecology, nutrition, and everyday life

It was designed not as a decorative garden, but as a public spatial commons - where learning, ecology, and community could meet.

Interruption by the Pandemic

After three months of fieldwork and preparation, the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic struck the region. The project was about to enter its building stage when the situation forced an immediate halt. To preserve the work, I shared illustrations and spatial models of the proposed garden, tracing its intentions and potential futures. (These models are included here as part of the project’s documentation.)

This residency remains a key reference in my practice. It brought together:

• public-space engagement

• fieldwork & community dialogue

• agricultural and nutritional systems

• gendered and caste-structured environments

• ecological thinking

The experience shaped how I understand rural public spaces - not simply as physical locations, but as  social, cultural, and political environments where identity, labour, and nourishment intersect. It reaffirmed a central thread in my work that - public spaces, even the smallest ones, are critical sites for collective wellbeing, resilience and social imagination.