YAVATMAL: Land of organic farming and women’s lib

Yavatmal was formerly known as Yeotmal town in Maharashtra state in central
India. Yavatmal, located 1,500 ft (460 m) above sea level, is a district
administrative cen-ter, a cattle-breeding town and a market for peanuts, cotton
and timber. Yavatmal city is located on the Nagpur-Darwha state highway and is
just seven km from the airport.

This town is also close to Amravati, which is situated right in the center of
the nor-thern border of Maharashtra. Amravati meaning ‘abode of immortals’,
may be traced with the association of Lord Krishna. It lies mainly in the Tapi
basin with only some of its parts on the eastern border lying in the valley of
Wardha. Besides cotton, jowar and tur (lentil), which are the leading crops in
the region; orange gardens are also important from the agricu-lture point of
view.

Womens liberation at Yavatmal

District officials and UNICEF have collaborated on the Integrated Women’s
Empower-ment Program in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district. More than 800 women’s
self-help groups have been set up, helping villagers set up dairy and horti-culture
cooperatives and seve-ral other livelihood projects. With their newly found con-fidence,
women are now taking charge of village education and other public services.

Four years ago, the women of this village got together to
form a Self-Help Group (SHG). Today, they are self-sufficient, no longer at the
mercy of the local moneylender who used to lend the 300-odd villagers here funds
at a whopping 10-20 percent interest per month. Now, the people borrow money
from their own Bachat Gat. In fact, they even offer money to the moneylender.

Shirola is one of the hun-dreds of villages covered by
Sadhana Dube at the Yavatmal district office. Dube and her team, who work with
several local NGOs, have put to rest the standard criticism that govern-ment
officials work merely to tote up figures and meet targets on paper. This team
are genuinely interested in the up-liftment of the poor rural women and through
them the entire village.

Forging a partnership with UNICEF, the Yavatmal district
office decided to implement the official Integrated Women’s Empowerment
Program in two of Yavatmal’s 16 blocks. UNICEF, which has an educational pro-ject
ongoing in Yavatmal dis-trict, had expressed an interest in sensitising and
empowering women who could make a difference to various aspects of village life–education
being just one.

Sadhana Dube coordinates this project and has successfully
built up a chain of women volu-nteers to reach out to women in every village in
the Pand-harkavada and Daravhe blocks of Yavatmal.

Their efforts have paid off. About 820 SHGs, consisting of
18,000 women, have been formed in the two blocks. Their aggregate savings have
crossed Rs 32,00,000. Meanwhile, Dube has turned her attention to the third
block–Zari–where she is supported by a dedicated young couple Sangeeta
Chau-han and Sanjay Walke.

The change in villages like Ganeshwadi, in Daravhe block, is
immediately discernible. Ganeshwadi is a small hamlet inhabited by people
belonging to the Pardhi scheduled tribe. The 100-odd people here once survived
just by thieving. This is no longer the case, thanks to a women’s self-help
group that managed to save around Rs 50,000 over three-four years. It took a
loan of Rs 2.5 lakh from the State Bank of India to buy buffaloes, build a shed
for the animals and set up a coo-perative dairy business. This village, in
barren Vidarbha, now boasts a rose farming business. Indeed, dairy and
horticulture have completely transformed the village.

Besides improving the local economy, SHGs also address social
issues. In Daravhe, SHG members counseled an alcoho-lic husband and offered him
a loan of Rs 5,000 to set up a shoe shop provided he gave up drinking. Today,
the man runs a reasonably large shop in town.

Meanwhile, the women discuss issues and question traditions,
such as the stigma attached to widows. They got a young widow to defy tradi-tion
and break a coconut and inaugurate the building of a temple. SHG members try to
persuade the parents of girl children to allow their daugh-ters to study
further. They offer solutions if there is a problem. In Daravhe, the local SHG
prevented a deserted woman taking to prostitution.

In Chandrapur district, also in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha
region, the Nehru Yuva Kendra has wrought a similar transfor-mation through
women’s SHGs. Vimal Madavi from Marakal-metha village in Korpana block is
called ‘The Iron Lady’. She cannot read, but takes care of attendance
registers. This lady keeps an eye on the school when the teacher is not around.
Vimal and the other women intervene in other aspects of the school too, to see
that all the children attend, study well and are looked after.

Earlier these women would get cheated while buying seeds and
fertilizer on credit. The shopkeeper would charge Rs 300 for the seeds, instead
of Rs 200 and then charge 10 percent interest. After three-four mon-ths, when
the crop was harves-ted and sold, they would repay him Rs 420 for seeds that
cost only Rs 200. When they formed the SHG, they got a loan from the rural bank
at 12 percent per annum, ie one percent per month. This amount was distri-buted
among the members at three percent. Now, for the same seeds worth Rs 200,
members repay their own SHG only Rs 224. The villagers understand this math.
Instead of the shopkeeper taking 10 percent every month, they would rather have
their own SHG earn three percent as, with this, their corpus grows. And with
money from the corpus they are able to set up collective businesses.

In Maykalpur, the SHG bought utensils worth Rs 7,000 to be
used during marriage feasts. The utensils are hired out to nearby villages. Some
SHG members have started making pickles, agarbattis, etc.

Today, banks take SHGs more seriously and offer them
collective loans. The formation of these self-help groups has emboldened the
village women who now stand on the dais, give speeches, explain schemes and make
appeals. They have even presented the accounts to local officials.

Organic farming at Yavatmal

In the heart of India’s orange country, Vidarbha, an orange farmer who
adopted natural farming techniques is reaping a rich harvest. Meanwhile, larger
orchards are facing rep-eated crop failures. At a time when Vidarbha’s famous
ora-nge orchards are experiencing successive crop failures brou-ght on by
drought and the resultant lack of water, but this is changing as varied farming
methods have been adopted. ‘Do nothing and change nothing’–farmers here
have adopted a technique espoused by the Japanese natural farming guru, Masanobu
Fukuoka.

A little more than a decade ago, the orange orchards were in
full bloom across Vidarbha and Uttarwar was one of the few dejected men in the
area. The lack of water has frustrated a lot of farmers due to which they cut
down their trees. Now natural farming techniques have been adopted and the
results are also visible. Many of them were abandoning orange cultivation
altogether because of irrigation problems.

With rainwater as the only input, farmers are watching his
trees bloom all over again. Instead of removing the grass and weeds, they
undertook their mulching, creating eight-nine-inch-thick layers of mulc-hed
waste. That helped retain rainwater. Covering the soil with mulched vegetation
has ensured the survival of nece-ssary ground insects and bacte-ria that
normally die in the sun.

Also, in keeping with the Fukuoka philosophy, no chemicals
are ever sprayed on the crop. This has been made possible by the orchard’s
location–since Yavatmal is basically cotton country, the isolated orange farm
does not carry the same disease risks as it would in Nagpur or Amravati.