Project background

Rural poverty has far reaching consequences, migration to cities, increased social problems, and disenchantment of youth, increased crimes and more. Despite many well-meaning anti-poverty programmes rural poverty is still a matter of large distress. Reasons for this could be several. However some stand out and there is increasing awareness about them among the planners. Top-down approach and exploitative development were the two main faux pas that had serious side effects. Farmer was seldom thought worthy to be considered as an associate in planning or research to decide his priorities and requirements. Consequently, mechanisms towards this end have been rarely developed.

BIRD-K’s nearly three decades of experiences in rural development proves that the multi-fold socio-economic problems in the villages have their roots in the fast deteriorating natural resources in general and agriculture in particular. Modern day agriculture is increasingly becoming unsustainable with negative impact on environment. There is widespread erosion of agro-bio-diversity. Trees are seen as antagonistic to agricultural crops and monoculture is promoted everywhere. Loss of diversity has resulted in severe pest attacks and increased use of chemical pesticides. The rising input costs have driven farmers into poverty and there are several cases where farmers under the pressure of mounting debt have committed suicides.

However there is potential for improving the dry land agricultural scenario with Eco-friendly agriculture practices with careful planning and execution of sound rainwater harvesting measures and by adopting tree based farming systems. It appears that there is over emphasis on irrigated agriculture despite the fact that the investment cost per acre of irrigation is unaffordable to majority of the farmers. There is increasing evidence available to suggest that the unscientific irrigation practices adopted have resulted in vast stretches of irrigated lands becoming barren and going out of cultivation.

The mono cropping patterns that emerged in the irrigated belts have damaged the crop diversity resulting in adverse effect on the agro-ecosystem. This has resulted in damage to the cultural ethos of the community and time tested sustainable agricultural practices There is need to understand the nature and water cycles and adopt suitable cropping systems that is ecologically sound and economically viable. The Special Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) aims at establishing a large number of micro-enterprises in rural areas, building up on the potential of the rural poor. It also aims at bringing every assisted family above the poverty line in three years.

It is conceived as a holistic programme of micro-enterprises covering all aspects of self-employment, viz.; organization of the rural poor into self-help groups and their capacity building, planning of activity clusters, infrastructure build up, technology, credit and marketing. BIRD-K based on its vast experiences, is convinced that the multi-fold socio-economic development in our villages can be addressed only through a very integrated and multi disciplinary approach. This proposal is made based on the understanding that the convergence of similar approaches taken by the SGSY and BIRD-K could initiate a sustainable process of development in the proposed villages.

The nature of the problem in the proposed area can be broadly classified as under:

• Depletion of natural resources
• Depletion of ground Water
• Unsustainable agricultural practices and mono cropping resulting in poor agricultural yield and repeated outbreak of pests. The farmers have resorted to heavy spraying of chemical pesticides leading to further deterioration of local environment. There is need for popularizing nature friendly agricultural practices in the area.
• Lack of technical know how for improved and sustainable agriculture
• Lack of soil nutrient management
• Lack of marketing facilities
• General health condition of the livestock is poor due to poor management, unplanned breeding, lack of regular health coverage and fodder shortage during summer.
• Degraded land devoid of vegetative cover
• Want of wage employment for resource poor farmers
• Migration
• Lack of hygiene and sanitation
• Inadequate drinking water and health facilities
• Malnutrition
• Occurrence of draught and lack of coping mechanism