Section - VII - An Overview of the Intervention

This section gives an overview of the Intervention which we are trying to understand, imternalise and implement with the guidance of Datye.

Sri.K R Datye is an eminent senior Civil Engineer based in Mumbai with over 30 years of experience in planning, construction and operation of large scale irrigation, hydropower and infrastructure projects in India and Africa. He has worked both in Government and as an independent consultant for large private and public sector corporations. He has served on international committees charged with development and standardization of technical norms in hydraulic and geotechnical engineering. For the last 15 -18 years, he has been deeply involved in rural development activities, initiating and leading a number of technology development projects in water, infrastructure and energy sectors. He continues to be involved in policy making committees, concerned with agriculture and rural development activities at both State and Federal government levels. He is a founding member of the Centre for Applied Systems Analysis and Development (CASAD) and Society for People's Participation in Ecosystem Management and, more recently, the Watershed Forum, of which his Society for Renewable Technology is an integral part.

About the Intervention:

The overall scheme is like this:

Step 1: 5 Landless women who form part of a Self Help Group work on 1/2 acre land negotiated with the farmer ( One of the women could be from the farmer's family itself) with some assured water to begin with

Step 2: These landless women are then taught the techniques of soil nutrition improvement, water management, Integrated Pest Management etc., But for their 1/2 Acre they use the High Biomass input Renke Method. They are also given Food-For-Work or Employment Guarantee Assistance ( EGA) as an incentive to learn these methods

Step 3: These women will try and achieve the yield targets set for them. That is 10T of saleable vegetables in their 1/2 acre of land

Step 4: Each woman gets 1/5th share of the produce as entitlement

Step 5: By the end of 2 years these women are not unskilled labourers anymore but skilled labourers whose capacities on organic / natural farming are built. These now become part of a service cooperative ready to offer their services to any farmer seeking their services

Step 6: Seeing this sort of output with no other input other than the labour input would catch the attention of the farmers and they might want to hire these women of the service cooperative

Step 7: A microplanning exercise is done with the help of the local youth groups wherein the local Natural Resources Data is collected like water bodies available, the water harvesting possibilities within the watershed area, the present cultivation practices of farmers, their yield, the best yields, the water usage patterns, the crops etc., are collected and collated

Step 8: From the Microplanning and other satellite data an analysis is also made of the total water harvesting capabilities in the watershed areas and an approximate irrigation possibility is made

Step 9: At this point of time we negotiate with the farmers and form a broader collective called as Neighborhood Units (NU) so that the total cultivable area would increase to around 10Ha for foodgrains, pulses, vegetables, fruits etc., This would consist of typically 5 land holding farmers with 20 landless women

Step 10: Also in a further effort to create some more assets for the women of the service cooperative, negotiations are held with Panchayats (MOU) to part with the common lands and these women would typically grow 40 trees each and maintain the same. The trees could be prennials like Mango, Papaya etc., and biofuel trees like Pongemia, Jathropa etc., or biomass yielding leaves for the Biogas plants leading to alternative, renewable energy systems. This would typically be 1.2 Ha (6 Guntas per woman) for the Prennials and another additional 5 Ha for the alternative energy trees

Step 11: Also one more further idea is to integrate the training of various techniques into an open school syllabus leading to an open school certificate on sustainable agriculture. This is what we call as Education at Workplace

As a result we would move from Food Security to begin with, then Livelihood as a next step and finally onto Energy Security in addition to the Education at Workplace agenda