Facilitating Change: Reflections of a Development Practitioner

Entering a village, familiarizing oneself with the people and their lives, gaining their confidence, understanding the terrain and the livelihoods, suggesting interventions, facilitating new practices, encouraging participation, meeting daily challenges and celebrating successes are some of the things a Development Practitioner experiences in her attempt to uplift rural lives

A griculture is considered to be a man’s business—starting from the image of a man when one thinks about a farmer to the representatives of seed companies to shopkeepers of inputs in district and block towns to 100 per cent male dominance in agriculture output markets. I am writing this not based on any researched data but based on my own experience of working with small and marginal farmers in different pockets of Jharkhand for over eight years. When I joined PRADAN, it was not even in my wildest imagination that I would be dealing with agriculture in my life. In PRADAN, however, we flow against the tide. The experience is enriching and, often, inspiring, with sporadic daunting episodes.

M y journey of being a development professional has largely been an enjoyable experience. I did and do make a lot of mistakes, however, during the process. I learned some valuable lessons as a result. My eight plus years of experience in PRADAN helped me realize increasingly that it is more important to understand what one wants to do to bring about change; accordingly, one will push oneself and gather the required resources to ensure that change. Which degree one possesses matters the least. This is how agriculture entered my life because the people I am working with are small and marginal farmers; for them, the most important resource is land. PRADAN’s focus is to help people in marginalized communities develop their own skills and initiatives so that they learn through experience how to build a livelihood.

Initiation

M y first assignment during my apprenticeship period was to train the community to plant creeper vegetables through the trellis method. This idea was to be implemented in two hamlets, inhabited completely by villagers belonging to the Schedule Tribes (STs). I was provided with the package of practices (PoP) by my senior colleague in the location and asked to visit the hamlets and encourage farmers to cultivate cucumber. Fortunately, the seeds had been provided by the block on 100 per cent subsidy. I went to both the hamlets and conducted meetings with the women and a few men. I convinced the people to adopt the PoP by showing them the data on the economics, by comparing the economic returns from their existing crops with the one I was offering, and teaching them about the PoP. People became ready to experiment with what I was suggesting. I prepared a list of the farmers, provided them with packets of seeds, and fixed a timeline for preparing the land, for sowing and for the next meeting. I then returned.

On the day fixed for the next meeting when I went to the two hamlets, I saw that nothing had happened as per plan. No farmer had prepared the land or sown the seeds. The reasons were not very clear to me. One woman said that people are not able to trust me because I am a diku (foreigner). I realised that the villagers had many questions about my knowledge of agriculture. I was a woman from an urban area, who had never been to any agriculture fields. They were correct to a large extent. It took me no time to realise that, being a woman, I would have to make extra efforts to prove myself as efficient and knowledgeable enough to provide training in agricultural practices and win the community’s trust. My first endeavour, therefore, was not to conduct agricultural interventions but to become one with the villagers. I started door-to-door visits and listened to their life stories, their struggles and aspirations, and shared mine too. It took time, and at the end of the season, cucumbers were being grown on the trellis in both the hamlets! I could achieve, however, only 50 per cent of the target, the reasons being the poor turnout of farmers and the mortality of the crop. I understood the equal importance of connecting with the people as well as of being knowledgeable about basic agriculture principles.

I found myself to be a good listener and, soon, the villagers shared their hearts with me. Connecting with the villagers was never an obstacle for me because I could easily bond with them. However, because I had no practical or theoretical knowledge of agriculture, it was difficult for me to gauge the reasons for the crop failing or giving less yield. The good thing about PRADAN is that it gives an apprentice a year for learning by doing. And the best method to learn something is to have hands-on experience. I started attending training on the technicalities of agriculture. I read up on the PoPs as well as the material my seniors had and started applying this knowledge on the ground. With time, I gained a little more confidence in grounding the agricultural interventions.

Explorations

O nly knowing the PoP is not enough for agricultural interventions. In Jharkhand, a marginal farmer hesitates to make changes in her present method of doing agriculture because of the fear of crop failure. Most villagers possess a small plot of land, on which they cultivate cereals and pulses; these are fixed crops to ensure food security for the family. For a marginal farmer, to aspire for cash income from agriculture is a distant dream. With erratic rainfall, lack of irrigation infrastructure to unavailability of timely quality inputs, kharif becomes the only season for securing food to the maximum for a marginal and small farmer household. These factors together lead to low confidence and a low risk-taking attitude of the farmers. I found it equally important to talk with the farmers about their apprehensions of adopting improved agricultural practices and adopting high value cash crops. These discussions helped me plan interventions more effectively and discover hitherto unexplored areas, for instance, input linkages such as timely quality seeds, fertilizers and integrated pest management systems, and the output linkages, that is, sale of the produce. For some farmers, it is difficult to take the produce to even the nearby local hatiyas (village markets) because of lack of people to do so. They need marketing services at their farms. Some are ready to take their produce, with handholding support, to mandis (markets), provided they have assured buyers.

These links in the supply chain are missing in my area of work. I was once again stuck as to how to work through all these aspects. I had no clue. With the help of my team and my mentors, I started to focus equally on these aspects as well. I spoke with the communities on possible solutions. The major services I could identify are: i) Timely quality input supply ii) Integrated pest and disease management and iii) Output linkages. I put forth the concept of appointing Agriculture Entrepreneurs (AEs), identified by the community and trained by PRADAN, to provide these services to farmers at their doorstep. At this point in time, I realized that I would have to design business models, help build partnerships with relevant stakeholders, conduct AE training modules, etc., along with enhancing my knowledge of agricultural technicalities. The list was growing and so was I.

A nother area of engagement when working with the villages is gender integration in agricultural interventions, with special focus on establishing a woman’s identity as farmer. Ironically, although a majority of the agricultural work is performed by women, when they were asked to draw a picture of a kisan (farmer), all of them drew a man. It is unconventional for village women to participate in technical trainings, planning meetings, making decisions on crops, selling the produce and having access to and control of the income earned. Till now, all these decisions are taken by men. With the help of the Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) framework, we designed Information, Education, Communication (IEC) material, used for imparting knowledge to the community through mass campaigns, modular training, etc.

At the Helm

W hen we get an opportunity to lead the theme in which we want to work and bring change in the lives of the people, it adds feathers to our wings. I joined a team in Santhal Paragana region of Jharkhand. Santhals are the major tribe in the region. More than 70 per cent of the people are cultivators and agricultural labourers. In the alluvial plain lands, people cultivate multiple crops. And in the vast undulating tracts, the cropping intensity of the division is 116 per cent. Paddy is the main crop. Only 10 per cent of the total cultivable area is irrigated. I was given the opportunity to lead the agriculture theme of my team. The promotion of Agriculture Production Clusters (APCs) was to be initiated in the region for the first time by PRADAN teams.

L eading the agriculture activity demanded additional skills. Not only did I have the conviction of bringing change through agricultural interventions with small and marginal farmers but I also needed to help my team members build perspective around it, designing the team’s action strategies. I initiated discussions with my team members as how to move ahead in promoting APCs in such regions, where there is only 10 per cent irrigated land. The advantage in teamwork is that multiple perspectives on the same theme come to the fore. My team too came up with different strategies, considering the context as well as profiles of the families we are working with. Looking at the nutrition as well as cash income aspect, we came up with three strategies: i) Cultivating pulses on a large scale to assure protein security ii) Promoting kitchen garden interventions with the landless and iii) Establishing APCs with small and marginal farmers.

T he team wanted me to conduct demonstrations of technical training, village-level planning training, training of trainers (ToTs), day-wise action planning with the cadres, etc., because I was the lead person. I became engrossed in developing intervention designs, modules, IEC material, especially in APC promotion strategies. I conducted technical training for agriculture master trainers, village-level cadres, business planning of AEs, workshops with seed companies for building direct linkages with AEs for smooth input supply, etc.

Although my team members were with me during the entire process, I found myself feeling anxious sometimes when conducting technical training. The reasons for this are not clear. Could it have been because the people sitting in a circle in front of me were all men, irrespective of what forum it was? I am not entirely sure. I pushed myself to overcome these anxieties and move on towards the goal. Initially, there was a sense of resistance from the men, which I could deduced by the late or lack of responses from a few of them. Now, I am more connected with those who had the initial resistance as compared to the others. Moreover, today, when I conduct team-level training or meetings with the agriculture cadres, 30 per cent of the people in the circle are women.

I tried to mobilize resources from relevant partner organizations to experiment with new agriculture interventions such as marigold and watermelon. The results of these interventions are motivating for me as well as for my team. The demand for marigolds during post kharif is increasing steadily. And the number of watermelon farmers is also increasing, keeping in mind the availability of irrigation. I represented my team in the internal resource group of Santhal Paragana Development Cluster of PRADAN, which was a new experience for me. I felt energized when people appreciated my team’s work. And when our work was looked at critically, I could not sleep at night till the issues raised were sorted out.

Realizing the Change

I n every process, it is crucial to connect with each other in order to assimilate the interventions into lives. The more I engaged with and immersed myself in the activity, the more connected I became with the villagers. When one experiences one success story, it boosts and motivates one to continue with the efforts. This is exactly what happened with me. Not all the interventions gave 100 per cent results because agriculture is very susceptible to weather conditions, and even more so in regions such as the Santhal Paragana, where irrigation is negligible and rainfall erratic. As mentioned earlier, kharif is the main season for farmers in this region; yet, vegetables are more susceptible to disease and pest attacks in kharif. When I heard women farmers sharing in the annual adhiveshans (functions) and annual general meetings, at the village, panchayat, Cluster and block levels, about their cash earnings, it added to my confidence. It also helped me understand the potential of agriculture in the lives of small and marginal farmers. The two or three women AEs, groomed during this period of time, are contributing to agriculture interventions equally in our team’s jurisdiction. The belief and conviction of these women and men farmers to make agriculture their main livelihood motivates me very strongly to bring about change in their lives by bridging any existing gaps.

The Learning

H aving an understanding of what one wants to do to bring about change in the villages and having the conviction to work towards this goal are important. What remains is to build one’s skills and to focus one’s efforts on the goal.

As a practitioner, I would like to say that the most crucial interventions in rural Jharkhand are to bring more public investment funds into villages, manage natural resources, build rain water harvesting structures, create more irrigation infrastructure, adopt a regenerative agriculture approach to revive rural economy, and attract more youth to agriculture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bandana Devi

Bandana Devi has a master’s degree in Mass Communication and Journalism. She is a development practitioner with more than eight years of experience in working with rural community in Jharkhand. Her work involved mobilizing marginalized rural women into collectives to work on the issues of livelihood and gender. She has extensive experience of working on the issues of gender-based discrimination with women and girls; promoting women’s collectives to work for women’s rights and gender justice and promoting Agriculture Production Clusters. She is currently based at Poraiyahat block of Jharkhand and working as an Executive in PRADAN. Her interest areas include economic empowerment of women, Gender-Caste-Class equality and sustainable development.