After years of toil on the 0.4 acres her family holds, 32-year-old Lalitha Mahto, who lives with her husband and two children in Rola village of Gola block in Jharkhand’s Ramgarh district, has begun to see better times.

Her life began witnessing a change three years ago after she enrolled herself as a member of a farmer producer organisation (FPO), Mannonati Mahila Kisan Producer Company Limited paying ₹500. 

With her husband being a daily labourer, the onus on taking care of farming fell on Mahto. This meant she had to take care of buying seeds, crop inputs, fertilizers and tend to the crop. Once the harvest got over, she had to take it to the market to sell the crops. 

More time with family

Most of the time, an entire day was lost tending to these necessities and there was no guarantee of the produce she took from her farm being sold. That means loss of valuable time and money trekking the 5 km to the market from her home.

As part of the producer group meeting, Mahto planned her crop basket and the community resource person provided technical assistance and package of practices (PoP) training. She also received training in agriculture inputs to utilise her land to its potential.

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The other advantage that she got was that the FPO began picking up her produce from her door. “Now, I need not spend time going to the market. And I get to spend more time with my family,” Mahto told businessline.

That is just one part. The other is that her income has doubled in the last couple of years and she has now begun to send her sons for private tuition. “We have constructed a poultry shed. Poultry will give us additional income,” she said.

Uplifting rural communities

Her income has increased to ₹20,000-25,000 during kharif from ₹10,000-15,000 earlier. In addition, she gets ₹15,000 from the rabi crops and ₹13,000 from summer-grown vegetables.  

All this has been possible thanks to the LEAP (Livelihoods Enhancement through market Access and women emPowerment) project of PRADAN, a New Delhi registered non-government organisation, with funding from Walmart Foundation. 

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Mahto, who grew paddy during the kharif season and some vegetables including potato during rabi season, now cultivates paddy, watermelon, peas, brinjal, potato and onion. 

According to Narendranath Damodaran, Integrator, PRADAN - founded in 1983 - the NGO works directly with the rural community to speed up developments in villages. 

“We work across all central India tribal areas in endemically poor regions. When we enter a region, we work for a longer period of 10-15 years to bring social and economic changes in the tribal, women, adivasis and vulnerable sections of the society,” Damodaran said. 

More power for women

PRADAN focuses on building strong community institutions such as self-help groups, FPOs, formal and informal companies and catalyses the local administration such as panchayats to work together.

“All agencies involved work together around a larger development plan and help these community groups get financial and other support for seeds, crop inputs, and linkage with other institutions,” he said.

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One of the features of the project is that since its launch, it has included women in the FPOs so that their voices can be heard. 

“We don’t want women to be sidelined from the process of development. Their priorities should be included and women play a prominent role in leadership and the village,” Damodaran said.

Entering value-chains

Sourangshu Banerjee- PRADAN Team Coordinator, West Bengal, mobilising women had been a challenge 30 years ago. “But it is no longer a challenge now. Women have begun breaking the shackles. They take risk in production and fight within their household besides taking up challenges,” he said.

Earlier, women faced problems if production or yield was low. They had a tough time when their produce went unsold. But with the emergence of FPOs, they have begun to manage well.

“Many women have invested their life-long savings in joining the FPOs and they are committed. They have even helped the FPOs enter the value chain instead of just producing an agro produce and aggregating it,” Banerjee said. 

The launch of the LEAP project and entry of FPOs in the women’s lives have resulted in production increasing by 10-20 per cent, while input costs have declined by 60-70 per cent. On the value-addition side, the women members produce oil from mustard, dehusk paddy and manufacture turmeric and chilli powder. 

Additional cash

“Women have shown better capability. The value-addition units are totally managed by them. Big machines in paddy dehusking are “ operated by them,” he said. 

Damodaran said the project’s core approach focuses on farm-based livelihoods which make up 85-90 per cent. “There are off-farm focus too such as livestock. In rural areas, people maintain chickens or goats in a small way,” he said.

These rural people had been following old methods in farming. What the NGO’s project has done is to improve those practices. The practices are more close in natural ways, including on forest lands the tribals have access to, so that their returns are optimised for ample food and nutrition.

“Besides, they can get additional cash for other investments such as health, house, education and clothes. Typically, we concentrate on 10,000-12,000 households in remote areas and ensure that over 10-15 years their lives become better,” Damodaran said.  

Similar approach

Most of these achieved under the leadership of women and farmers are given plans for round-the-year activities so that they can cultivate at least three crops.

The NGO identifies a crop with which the remote rural population is well-versed with but tries to improve by introducing better varieties. In paddy for instance, it introduced high-value paddy that can fetch farmers better prices.

“Similarly, we increased the area under watermelon in Bankura in Bengal and production touched 1,000 tonnes. The fruit is now sold all across West Bengal and Bihar too,” Banerjee said. 

These activities have ensured that PRADAN has the largest organic women producers group - 500- with the members themselves reporting any diversion from the process, he said. 

PRADAN’s approach is similar across projects. It looks for better price realisation, high productivity and market linkage.

Decision-makers

The NGO has chalked out strategies for marketing, where growers negotiate with the buyers. Members also attend trade fairs and get leads. It updates market rates with the FPOs.

“Women take decisions on the sales. Based on the price, they decide which market they should sell their produce in,” Banerjee said, adding that PRADAN, which changes its executive director every five years, has its own transport arrangement. However, for vegetables, the FPOs rely on local transport companies.

Damodaran said FPOs form the node of all the NGO’s services that impacts 10 million people in 2 million households. “Of the 2 million households, one million are in 7 States where the NGO operates directly and the rest through government and other society organisations,” he said.

Current operations

The tribal people make up 60 per cent of these two million households and vulnerable sections the rest. “Our approach is to go to remotest district, remotest block and handpick the poorest and then saturate that place with our programme,” he said 

Currently, the NGO functions in West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan. “In the future, we would like to enter Andhra, Telangana, Maharashtra and Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh,” Damodaran said.

PRADAN, which gets funding from global organisations such as Melinda Gates foundation, Ford Foundation, Walmart, corporate firms and other organisations, is doing a bit of work in the North-East and in Virudhunagar district in Tamil Nadu.

The NGO works with 66 Farmer Producer Companies that have a total of 59,000 shareholders in 82 blocks across 36 districts. “Last year, our turnover was ₹14 crore,” Banerjee said. 

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