A life changing journey

I remember the date 30^th August 2011, when for the 1^st time I heard a place name called Dahod. ICICI Fellows team introduced me to my project Agro Service centre. Agriculture is always been my core area of interest, and I was so happy that my project was parallel to my interests. Without waiting for second thought, I went on reading the project details. Probably that time I wasn’t able to understand the complexities, challenges and the great amount of learning my project had to offer me. 

Gujarat at First sight

I reached Dahod on 2^nd Sept 2011, I had no idea about the place and my encounter with strange faces started. This was my first visit to Gujarat and I was enthusiastic for trying gujarati foods, learning Gujarati language and to find out the difference or approach that Gujarat has, which signifies Gujarat as a developed state and my state yet to have.  

My project was to provide information support and hand-holding to the Cadre of 80 Jan Kalyan Mandal coordinators, with drafting a source-book for replication of the project in other districts of Gujarat. Along with that I had to set up two Communities driven Agro service centers in Santrampur and Kadana block of Pnachmahal district of Gujarat.

My Project

My project involved Setting up the Agro Centre, which caters the need of the marginal farmers as well as I had to make it an economically viable model. I was expecting that everything would be in place and I would think on developing a business plan for the institution. As like every time my expectation and reality had nothing in common. Later on I felt the foundation of the institution was not strong to plan for a business model, hence I started working on strengthening the institution. 

 Bridging the Gap

Agro center has a committee of 11 people in each center to manage the institution. Twice in every month committee conducts a formal meeting to take decision on certain issues which ensure better function of the institution, but it was not effective. I personally visited to committee members, and tried to identify the causes which were not allowing them to come for the meetings. I found out the two causes one was, members were from those villages which were not coming into the operational area of the Agro center. And another was lack of willingness among the committee members. Main while I started living in one of the project village called Ukhrelly. I hold both formal and informal meetings with committee members and gave my best to set a vision for them. I was thinking that I am not good at convincing people but this project taught me, if someone is committed to change, then he/she can motivate thousands of others to come and join to the process of change. I felt there must be some other leaders in the committee as well for smoothing the process. We form another committee of 14 people to keep track on operating committee. And operating committee is accountable to the new committee of 14 people. 

Partnership for Development

The ideal role an institution can play for development of a village is that of a facilitator for local people to help them shed their inhibitions, and provide opportunities to develop necessary skills and gain knowledge. It cannot be possible without proper access to information. And somehow it was one of my challenges to overcome. I went on finding better ideas to spread out information among the beneficiaries, and I came out with partnership model. Generally partnership model sounds a bit strange in rural context but it is possible, if we could find right people as our partners in the journey of in -culturing change. Actually we often fail to trust villager’s ability. I had read somewhere “it requires an ability to recognize someone’s ability” perhaps we are missing out the required ability.

I, along with committee members visited our operational villages, in search of partners or agents of Agro service center. We made village storekeepers, Masons, filed workers from fertilizer companies and local cooperatives as our agents to spread out information among beneficiaries.  

Eight days of Fieldwork

Problems of a region are best comprehended by the people living there; hence they are most befitted to provide the solution. Keeping this in mind I started an eight days continue field work in 12 different villages to find out other possibility of interventions for Agro Service center. As expected got a long list of intervention some of them are like, Seed distribution, Pesticides and its information, Crop insurance, Renting out small and frequent used technologies, Promotion of organic farming, Information hub, Bringing back traditional farming system and Procurement and marketing of crops. 

This project provided me ample of opportunities to work with certain projects which have a direct impact on the Bhil tribe’s quality of life.  The interactions with the community ware in form of assisting them in making the decentralized plan of their habitat. This project also provided me a platform where I could determine the role of Para workers, Panchayat members, Village communities and other actors, and got a chance to work with them for driving the development agenda of the region. The project has also given me an opportunity to interact with community for framing bylaws for the Governance of Forest Land.

Last but not the least I want to thank every single people who helped me to learn and unlearn many things. Love you Gujarat really you're incredible... :)