Imbibing the Spriti of Sustainability

Besides the wheat and soyabean grown in that belt, Rampal Meghbal of village Baniyani, Ladpura block, Kota district, has planted guavas and oranges. As the trees will start fruiting in three years, he is also planting cauliflower. Rampal’s entire clan tills the four bighas of land to get maximum returns from it . Other vegetables often grown are tomatoes, chillies, brinjal. Some farmers have gone into dairy farming.

Like Rampal, more farmers have seen better income and more yield. The journey of an enthusiastic 50-year-old Kamla Bai from village Kotdi in Jhalawar, is a classic case of women empowerment in the male dominated farming world. “I come from a traditional farming family. My husband passed away when I was 30. At that time, I had eight bighas of land and earned Rs 1 lakh per annum. I joined the project in 2017 and saw an increase in yield of soyabean. My son had to discontinue his studies after standard 8, but my daughter studied till graduation.

Now, I grow corn, vegetables and fruits. My income is Rs 5 lakh per annum. I have taken eight bighas more on lease.”

Shriram Krishi Vikas Programme (SKVP) helps the farming community in increasing their productivity and profitability. This is an integrated rural development programme, covering over 500 villages annually. The six-month programme is executed through Shriram Krishi Vikas Kendras (SKVK). This includes visits to agricultural universities, animal husbandry camps and interaction with experts. Activities include formation of groups, demos in the fields, introduction to inter-cropping techniques. The SKVKs also undertake supplementary income generation training in compost making, poultry farming, horticulture, cattle breeding, bee keeping, growing fruits and vegetables. Free soil testing is also done.

Project Meetha Sona is DCM Shriram Sugar’s unique initiative for sugarcane farmers, based on the key principles of Suitability, Scalability and Sustainability. It works by catalyzing behaviour change among two lakh farmers working across 1.65 lakh hectares of farmland in the catchment area of DCM Shriram’s four sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh. The project is a multistakeholder engagement running successfully in collaboration with IFC and Solidaridad, and also includes multilateral agencies, developmental institutions and service providers, to address specific issues in the entire value chain.

This significant community outreach programme directly benefits the livelihood of sugarcane farmers, who are trained on productivity enhancement and large-scale conservation of water resources. Farmers are provided free press mud for soil health improvement and 260 Apna Sewa Kendras have been set up to promote farm mechanisation among smallholders. Good agricultural techniques such as trash mulching, laser levelling, furrow and drip irrigation have not only increased yields but led to a saving of 275 billion litres of water in the past three years. Bio Control Labs have been set in two sugar units, Rupapur and Ajbapur, to assist farmers in controlling pest attacks while reducing their usage of chemical pesticides.

A sugarcane farmer in Hardoi, Satinder Pal trained with DCM Shriram four years back. He says “I practice drip irrigation, do crop rotation and use less pesticide. My yield has increased. I am able to grow mustard, masoor dal and potatoes as intercrops for our own consumption, besides sugarcane and corn.”

‘Khel-khel mein kamal’ is the slogan that the 24-day camp learning model is based on. The programme is succeeding in closing the gap between recommended learning that is the syllabus and actual learning by making the learning process enjoyable and participatory. The model involves parents, community, teachers and volunteers. Evening group classes are being promoted in the village under close supervision of a village elder. Among the volunteers is 18-year-old Laxmi Prajapati, who wants “to do BA and become a teacher too”. She also spends time learning and teaching the young ones.

The camp measures the child’s level on the basis of beginner, letter, word, para and story. And then groups are formed, comprising four to six students, and given an activity. Not just work sheets, they also have access to a globe and tablet. So they play video games like Dhoom, based on cricket, on the tablet, but it’s the sixes and fours that get them acclimatised to mathematics. Filling colours introduces them to the different colours on Earth. The progress of each child is mapped regularly.

The government school teachers are also supportive of the model. Indu Kanta and Poonam, teachers at the government primary school in Poora Bahadur, have found a change in the children after these activities. By the end of the camp, a child is able to form a sentence, pronounce names correctly and can understand a bit of the world around him.

Evening time is when the Bal Library Intervention comes alive. As mothers are the first teachers, help is taken to make one home a centre of peer learning. The children spend an hour every evening here to do more activities which are given by the executing partners. This model is replicated every few metres in the village, which makes every evening buzz with knowledge-based activities. Dayawati is one proud mother of Poora Bahadur village. She leads an intervention programme and her son Nikhil is the Prime Minister in the school's Bal Sansad. She has studied till standard 8. The globe and tablet are popular learning tools.

Besides this, the company has instituted scholarship programmes, built infrastructure and a school for students up to class 12th at Nimoda Hariji in Kota. In Bharuch, the company funded a degree college and has instituted a scholarship programme for primary school students in the villages around its facility.