The Untold Story of Rice Paddies in Bundelkhand
I used to work with a large sized organisation which funded social causes. I handled some agriculture based poverty reduction projects in Bundelkhand. It is a region in north central part of India and is spread across 10 districts along the boundaries of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The region does not have any large city, gets frequent droughts, has hunger problems and the resultant abject poverty. Add to it, extreme social inequalities and corrupt governance and it creates an ideal recipe for total hopelessness.
One of the activities we supported was erecting bunds in the fields and retaining as much rain water as possible. The intervention had a unique problem. For saving their black gram crop, in the event of excess rainfall, farmers were breaking the bunds, since the crop could not withstand water stagnation. Now all this work had a larger purpose, a technical design, required efforts and money. All of that was in danger.
An idea sprung up in my mind. It could save the field bunds, help the water to stop in the field, eventually percolate to become ground water and add to the food stocks of the farmers simultaneously. The farmers could cultivate rice in the patches where water was stagnating and keep rest of the plot for black gram. I checked with a farmer about what would happen if his family ate rice in place of wheat. He responded that rice or wheat did not matter since he was not able to cultivate enough food for his family anyway. In fact he told me that some 50 years back people were cultivating rice in the village.
I knew my limitation. It was just an idea and I was going to sit in Mumbai and not actually go on the ground. I shared it with some field partners. There was a cold response. But one person responded positively. ‘Let’s try with few farmers,’ he said. It required humongous effort in convincing those select few farmers and working with them side by side while they tried this new crop. It finally yielded rice grains. Farmers were happy that they could also grow a crop they had not imagined they could grow. Next year the number of farmers increased. The stories that I heard from the field were intriguing. The crop was not only protecting field bunds but was adding to the food stocks of the family. It substantially reduced the irrigation requirement of the succession crop. With enough food security, some family members could migrate and focus on earning cash incomes instead of growing wheat at high cost.
Now I could imagine the vociferous development professionals reacting to this out of the box story. “But a water intensive crop like rice should not be promoted at all in such drought affected region.” “Do you have substantial data on it?” “Even if you are meeting the food security, facilitating migration through changed cropping patterns is not a good way to deal with the inherent problems of the region.” I needed to brace myself properly against them and I also had to develop the concept further. But then it turned out to be futile as it was declared that there would be a strategic shift in the organisation. Many of the programmes were found to be irrelevant. The files started getting closed one by one. After some months I also left the organisation.
Is rice still being cultivated in Bundelkhand? Has it changed the way farming is done? Has it had any impact on the farmer families and villages?
May be yes or may be not!
One of the activities we supported was erecting bunds in the fields and retaining as much rain water as possible. The intervention had a unique problem. For saving their black gram crop, in the event of excess rainfall, farmers were breaking the bunds, since the crop could not withstand water stagnation. Now all this work had a larger purpose, a technical design, required efforts and money. All of that was in danger.
An idea sprung up in my mind. It could save the field bunds, help the water to stop in the field, eventually percolate to become ground water and add to the food stocks of the farmers simultaneously. The farmers could cultivate rice in the patches where water was stagnating and keep rest of the plot for black gram. I checked with a farmer about what would happen if his family ate rice in place of wheat. He responded that rice or wheat did not matter since he was not able to cultivate enough food for his family anyway. In fact he told me that some 50 years back people were cultivating rice in the village.
I knew my limitation. It was just an idea and I was going to sit in Mumbai and not actually go on the ground. I shared it with some field partners. There was a cold response. But one person responded positively. ‘Let’s try with few farmers,’ he said. It required humongous effort in convincing those select few farmers and working with them side by side while they tried this new crop. It finally yielded rice grains. Farmers were happy that they could also grow a crop they had not imagined they could grow. Next year the number of farmers increased. The stories that I heard from the field were intriguing. The crop was not only protecting field bunds but was adding to the food stocks of the family. It substantially reduced the irrigation requirement of the succession crop. With enough food security, some family members could migrate and focus on earning cash incomes instead of growing wheat at high cost.
Now I could imagine the vociferous development professionals reacting to this out of the box story. “But a water intensive crop like rice should not be promoted at all in such drought affected region.” “Do you have substantial data on it?” “Even if you are meeting the food security, facilitating migration through changed cropping patterns is not a good way to deal with the inherent problems of the region.” I needed to brace myself properly against them and I also had to develop the concept further. But then it turned out to be futile as it was declared that there would be a strategic shift in the organisation. Many of the programmes were found to be irrelevant. The files started getting closed one by one. After some months I also left the organisation.
Is rice still being cultivated in Bundelkhand? Has it changed the way farming is done? Has it had any impact on the farmer families and villages?
May be yes or may be not!
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