20 Years of Disha
1999: Agriculture Diversification

Being carried o u t in all the villages of five blocks of Saharanpur district, namely, Punwarka, Sadholi Qadim, Nakur, Gangoh and Nanauta, this activity aims at diversification of agriculture, thereby increasing income level of the farming community by forming their groups and linking the groups with the financial institutions. It also aims at implementing the government’s agricultural strategy to accelerate growth and alleviate poverty, strengthening the delivery of agricultural services, supporting the expansion and rehabilitation of rural infrastructure, integrating project investments with policies and legislative regulatory framework and fostering panchayati raj institutions, voluntary organisations and beneficiary participation.

The activity involves collection of information of the villages through PRA methods and baseline surveys. PRA and baseline surveys have revealed that major identified needs of the farmers pertained to grain production, post harvesting activities and horticulture.

Awareness about the activity is being generated through a mix of means like street plays, posters and pamphlets, wall paintings, and formal and informal meetings. Sub-activities take care of farming systems, integrated plant and nutrient management, integrated pest management, input supply, market linkages, post harvest activities, food processing, credit linkages, bio-fertilisers, savings of groups, etc.

Though training of farmers is a major component, much emphasis is given to entrepreneurship development training. As a result of entrepreneurship development farmers are engaging themselves in activities like mushroom cultivation, preparation of dairy products, seed selling, pickle, fruit processing, bakery, etc.

As a part of capacity building a number of farmers have been taken on exposure visits to suitable places so they could widen their horizon and on coming back use the learning in their fields. These places include Pantnagar, which has an agriculture university, and Lucknow and New Delhi, where agriculture exhibitions are organised from time to time.

By the end of 2003-04, Kisan Credit Cards worth Rs 8.77 million were issued to 2,500 farmers and cash credit limit worth Rs 8.0 million was sanctioned to 225 group members. With the easy availability of credit the farmers marched towards betterment of their economy. Another achievement was adaptation of bio-fertilisers, which provided two-fold benefit to the farmers – one, improvement in quality of land and, two, saving of farmers’ money which would have otherwise been spent on fertilisers.

A number of farmers have switched over to organic farming. To promote organic produces, a shop and a milk vend have been opened in Saharanpur city. The vend sells oxytocin free milk. Oxytocin is a harmone injected to cattle to get milk quickly.

• Women SHGs engaged in producing paper bowls, candles, pickles, namkeen (a salted mixture), vermi compost, etc. A few SHGs are also engaged in bee keeping, mushroom cultivation, etc
• Strawberry being cultivated by 25 farmers on about 18 hectares of land
• Floriculture being done on about 50 hectare of land
• Techniques like integrated pest management, integrated plant nutrients management, nadep, vermi composting introduced
• Cucurbits cultivation on scaffolding and tomato cultivation with staking introduced

Tehri Earthquake Relief

An earthquake of severe intensity struck Tehri Garhwal, Chamoli and Rudraprayag districts on the night of March 28-29, 1999. Immediate relief for the vicitms became need of hour. Disha decided to construct temporary shelters for 100 earthquake victims. Dehradun-based organisation People’s Science Institute prepared the design of these temporary shelters. It was called ‘four-in-one room’ set, that is, one set was meant for four families.

Disha worked in Laini and Pangariana areas of Hindao Patti of Ghansali block of Tehri Garhwal district. This area is so remote that no one reached there to undertake relief work. The organisation had old association with the area as it worked with ringal artisans. Help from the committee of ringal artisans came in handy.

The area had 403 earthquake hit families. Since the organisation only had provision for 100 families, a selection of worst hit families was made by holding open meetings in the villages.

There was problem in getting land for the temporary shelters. People were ready to part with land for individual construction, but they were not ready for group shelter. This problem was sorted through intervention of gram panchayat and lekhpal (the local revnue official) and formal agreements were entered into.

One more problem that cropped up was that of level land measuring 40 ft by 20 ft. To sort out this problem at a few places one, two and three room sets were constructed. The total number of shelters thus constructed took care of 100 families. All the shelters were completed by July 1999 and handed over to the villagers for their use.

Research on Green Revolution

A study on ‘Green Revolution, Equality and Environment Protection’ in context to western Uttar Pradesh was started in October 1999. The primary data for the study were collected from five representative villages in five districts of western Uttar Pradesh. The data collection involved several unstructured interactions with the villagers and was done in collaboration with five voluntary organisations active in these districts.

The study report revealed that the farmers of the area felt threatened and harassed by growing uncertainties of green revolution agriculture. It noted that the threat from pests and disease to crops was increasing in recent years. It found that the economics of agriculture worked out quite differently for big farmers and small farmers. A big farmer faced free market conditions, while this was not so in case of a small farmer because he had taken loans from the trader. The study made enough information available to start action on an experimental basis.

The study report was released at a largely attended function organised at the Training Centre.

Home