Sukhsingh’s Learning Journey
Using the resources of the land and experimenting with different kinds of crops and vegetables helped one enterprising villager of Amagara to become selfsufficient, without having to migrate for work as agricultural labour or unskilled labour on construction sites in big cities.
S ukhsingh Mandi is a young enterprising farmer from Amagara, who has invested heavily in vegetable cultivation since 2008. Prior to 2005, he had never contemplated becoming a farmer. Rather, he wanted to settle in a city where job opportunities were aplenty for skilled and semi-skilled labourers. To realize this dream, he used to migrate to nearby cities and do all kinds of odd jobs. But his life took a different course. Let us see what happened.
To understand Sukhsingh, one must know Amagara. Amagara is just like any Santhal tribal village in the East India Plateau region. It comprises 148 households and has a population of 686, of whom 320 are literate. The sex ratio is 971 to 1000. The villagers primarily depended on wage-labour and migration, with the yield from their own lands, providing them food security for 6–9 months. Most families own an average of around 1.5 acres, comprising mainly uplands and medium uplands, which they use for cultivating rain-fed kharif paddy—the only produce in Amagara. The farmers in these villages migrate to the agriculturally developed districts such as Burdwan and Hooghly, where they work as agriculture labour, transplanting paddy, including boro paddy, and work in the potato fields. Some youngsters migrate to places such as Jamshedpur and even Bangalore, to work on the construction sites. Middlemen recruit young boys for this.
The lack of water has been a problem in the area; it made the villagers largely dependent on rain for cultivation. So, in the initial days, all efforts of PRADAN were directed at how to get water all through the year, thereby increasing food security. To ensure a meal a day, the women and men had to travel very far if not to other districts and cities for work. The women had to finish all their household chores before going out to work as daily labourers, leaving their children behind. On returning, they had to resume all the household activities without any leisure time.