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Uday Das
Banamali Das
The Mighty Maity
CPRM - Birbhum
The Garden of Rokeya Bibi
Multipurpose Education Centre, Birbhum
People's Information Centre
Plantation in fallow land by adolescent group
Saldiha, the Steps Towards Fertility
The mixed cropping revolution in a fallow degraded plot
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These incidents happened to be the turning point in Uday's life. For quite some time he had been thinking of leaving chemical intensive agriculture and embracing organic agriculture to develop an integrated sustainable system. These incidents gave him the necessary jerk to work for realising his thoughts.
At this juncture, he happened to meet two trainers from Swanirvar, a local organization propagating sustainable agriculture in the area. From them he came to know about the concept of integrated farming, that ensures optimum production from a plot through sustainable management of available resources. Now he knew that soil erosion due to rain could be reduced by mulching; different plants that draw nutrients from different layers of the soil could be planted closely in a small space; that mixed cropping is more secured than monocropping in view of crop loss due to pest attacks. Backed up by this knowledge, Uday started the process of conversion from chemical-intensive to organic agriculture.
He started by dividing his 10 katha plot into four more or less equal parts. On the southeast side, he prepared a number of beds running from east to west. At first he used the spade to turn the soil. Then he spread a 4/5 cm. thick layer of green leaves and straw and put a layer of compost over this. On these beds he planted egg plants and chillies of the bullet variety in the pre-Kharif season. The chilie plants grew well, but pest infestation on the eggplants compelled him to uproot them and cultivate winged beans in its place.
In the northeast part of the land, he made a trellis for supporting winged beans and Indian spinach. He utilized the place under the trellis by cultivating a kind of pulse called Karai. After harvesting these crops, he combined winged beans and bitter gourd in the Kharif season. He made the trellis to support the creepers that ensured a better yield than if they are allowed to creep on the ground.
In the northwest section, he dug a drain to facilitate irrigation. Uday also uses this part as a path for his movement. In this part, he planted a number of banana trees. Uday considers banana to be one of the trees ideal for a home garden. All its parts - flowers, fruits and trunk - may be consumed as food. Its leaves may be used as plates and the ashes of its burnt bark may be used to clean utensils. But a regular watering is required for this tree.
According to Uday, the vegetables and fruits for cultivation in a home garden should preferably be selected from those that germinate easily, require less care and whose crop might be harvested over a longer period of time. He selected the vegetables and fruit trees for his garden from among those that meet these criteria. For example, bullet chilies are available almost throughout the year. The papaya tree yields fruits for 4 years at a stretch.
Uday made a small nursery in the south-west part of his land. There he prepared saplings of jackfruit, papaya, cowpea, karai and Indian spinach in the Kharif season of 2001. The innovative farmer utilized the surrounding ridges also for cultivation. On the eastern ridges, he planted papaya and bitter gourd. On the northern side he planted banana, papaya, bullet chilie, cowpea, winged bean, ridged gourd etc. An unmetalled road that runs into the village lies in the northern border of his land.
In between this road and his land there is a drain. Uday made a trellis over this drain to grow a few creepers like ridged gourd, bean and greater yams. He grew a few papaya trees on the western side and also ridged gourds, lady's finger and beans.
Uday informed that with this system of cultivation, he gets one crop or the other throughout the year. So he hardly gets an opportunity to plough the land. In his opinion, spade should be used to turn the soil. After harvesting one crop, the second crop should not be sown immediately. The first task after harvesting should be turning the soil with the spade. Then the land should be dried after exposing it to sun and rain for sometime. It is only after conducting these steps that the next crop should be sown.
He has reduced the use of chemical fertilizer to a great extent, but has not been able to stop it completely. At the moment he requires some 5 Kg. of Ammonium Sulphate for his 10 katha plot. He, however, had good result by using poultry litter in place of urea.
He has a cow and a calf in his home. Earlier, when he used to cultivate paddy, the straw necessary to feed the cattle came from his land itself. Now he has to purchase the straw, but his goats and hens feed on the leaves of the trees in his homestead and also on kitchen-waste. From the bamboo-clump adjacent to his house, Uday gets firewood sufficient to meet the family's fuel requirement for at least 8 months. He has to purchase fuel to meet the requirement for the rest of the year. Earlier he could fulfill his family's food requirement for 6 months from his own produce, now it covers at least 9 months.
In 1999, when piled up debts in the fertilizer shop compelled Uday Das to start changing the prevailing cultivation system to do something new, his brothers, habituated to chemical intensive cultivation, thought that he would perish with his wife and children very soon. Now, Uday has cleared his debts to the fertilizer shop and has got his daughter married in a good family. After undertaking a course in tailoring, his two sons have started earning independently. He has purchased one more cow. A TV set for the entertainment of his family has also been purchased in the mean time. He has plans to build a brick-house in place of the existing mud and tile structure.
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Umakanta Maity lives in a village called Mathura under the Bodai Gram Panchayat of Aamdanga Block in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal. Half of the 340 families living in the village had the opportunity of getting exposed to some kind of education. Of them 30% can just sign their names. The educational infrastructure includes a primary and a higher secondary school. The educated section has the advantage of using a government library in the village. A Sub-Health Centre and a veterinary centre take care of the treatment of humans and animals.
Total agricultural land amounts to 1500 bighas (1 bigha = 14,400 sq. ft. or 1337.76 sq. m). Out of this, 150 bighas is left unutilised as fallows and 110 bighas has a forest cover. In the entire village, 3 large and 30 smaller ponds occupy 8 bighas of land. Number of rich farmers in the village is only 15, whereas there are 70 middle farmers and 150 marginal farmers. About 100 people have no land of their own and have to thrive by working as wage labourers in others fields or construction of roads, canals etc. The amount of land owned by Umakanta is 56 kathas (1 katha = 720 sq. ft. = 66.89 sq.m). Out of this, 21 kathas has been reserved for trials.
An initiative taken by the ADO and a local organisation called Karunamoyee Bikalpa Janashiksha Kendra had prompted the farmers in the area to practise the IPM in their fields. While doing this Umakanta could well understand the importance of organic farming for a sustainable future. He has been practising organic farming for the last three years. Now the entire land and not just the trial plots is cultivated in the organic way. No chemical fertiliser has been used in his paddy fields for the last three years. Compost has been used as the only fertiliser in cultivating boro paddy.
Umakanta within this span of 3 years could realize the benefits of organic farming. It improves soil structure and enhances fertility. He used neem oil, neem leaf extract and wood ash as pest repellents. Paddy, jute, sesame, herbs like mint and marigold and different vegetables including eggplant, chillies, garlic, bottle gourd pumpkin, ridged gourd, potato, cauliflower, tomato, are grown in the trial plots. He has put a net around his fields to disallow the entry of pests, moths etc. He uses ferromon trap or sex trap to get rid of a few pests. He uses the dung of his three cows and vegetable peels to prepare compost. Green manure and pond slurry are also used as fertiliser. Leguminous crops are grown to fix more nitrogen in the soil. In spite of all these inputs, Umakanta has to purchase a few fertilisers like neem and mustard oil cakes, bone dust and a few bio-fertilizers. Seasonal yields of vegetables fetch him a lumsum of about Rs.3,500/-.
Umakanta’s land is an inexhaustible storehouse that fulfils the requirement of food and fuel of the family. The hay required for feeding the cows also comes from the field but the farmer has to purchase a small quantity of chaff for meeting the total requirement of fodder. Umakanta had conducted an unique trial in his field when he sowed the potatoes upside down. He had a good yield but in this case he applied chemical fertiliser. Umakanta believes that cows and ploughs should return to modern day agriculture. According to him maintaining cows is no problem at all. Power tillers are destroying our fields to unredeemable limits. The layer of soil 3-4 inches below the surface is getting hard and impenetrable. This is telling on the fertility and health of the soil.
Uma’s heart aches to see the best roadside lands getting sold for building houses thereby reducing the amount of agricultural land in the country. He has witnessed the growth of earthworms in a field cultivated organically, whereas their number decreases in fields cultivated with chemical inputs. A true farmer by nature Umakanta has agriculture as his only concern. Umakanta has organized like-minded innovative local farmers who believe in sustainable agriculture to form a group. They subscribe to a Bengali journal called ‘Chasher Katha’ that writes about sustainable agriculture and rural development. The group meets once a week to discuss about problems in agriculture and possible remedies.
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Banamali Das resides in Gayadham village of south24 parganas of West Bengal. He has 5 members in integrated farming. He started in 0.25 acres of land with pond and homestead garden and 0.33 acre of lowland.
This farm is situated in Sunderban delta, hence the soil is clayey and saline. His land was often flooded as it is located beside a river. In the lowland, Banamali used to grow paddy in Kharif and potato and lathyrus in Ravi. In his homestead, he cultivated fruit and leafy vegetables, but that could not reduce his dependence on the market. He reared fish in the pond too, but did not earn much. Cow dung and farmyard manure were used as soil ammendments.
Intervention
 A small pond was dug at one corner of his land and the soil obtained was utilized to raise the level of his trial plot. A surrounding trench was also made along the inner boundary of his plot to ensure year round irrigation. The outer border of this plot has some tall trees like eucalyptus, neem, subabul, rain tree, bamboo etc. The perennial trees surrounding his homestead garden are banana, guava, water apple, sapota, lemon, mango and coconut. Throughout the year he tries 25-30 types of vegetables today, using mixed cropping techniques of various combinations. Banamali Das has recently constructed a Biodigester at his backyard where he has set up a biogas plant to generate biogas and slurry
He has cow, duck and hen as livestock. He adopted suitable complex farming design with rice-fish-duck-azolla during kharif.
His trial farm is free from any chemicals.
He has 5 cows, 8 ducklings 4 hens and 14 chicks. As fodder he uses hay, grass and various crop residues. For chicken and ducks, he uses rice grains, husk, residues of the paddy harvest and small snails from the pond.
He cultivates fishes such as Rohu, Catla, Bata, Minor carp and catfishes in his pond, which has become more productive.
For fishfeed, he uses only left over of fodder, domestic waste, cow dung and sesame cake.
He has 5 cows, 8 ducklings 4 hens and 14 chicks. As fodder he uses hay, grass and various crop residues. For chicken and ducks, he uses rice grains, husk, residues of the paddy harvest and small snails from the pond.
He prepares vermicompost and compost by himself. He also uses sesame cake and graded biogas slurry as organic manure. He prepares mixture of neem extract, garlic paste and kerosene as pest repellent
Usually he keeps most of his seeds from the crops grown in the previous season. Only a few crops that are absolutely seasonal and are mainly cash crops like knolkhol, cabbage and cauliflower are purchased from the local market. He also exchanges his seeds after a certain period of time.
His trial plot and homestead garden is spread over a large area and is beautifully managed. He has introduced mixed cropping (with brinjal, radish, water spinach & potato + pumpkin, onion+ basella) in his field and has a vermicompost pit from where he serves the organic needs of his fields and garden. He has also adopted an integrated farming approach where he uses ducks to aerate his paddy fields, hens to consume the pests in his garden and lets in fingerlings when the paddy fields are flooded. His trial plot is in two parts, both to the right side of his home.
 In his trial plot the crop combination has increased from monocrop in baseline in Kharif 2004 to a combination of 9 crops in Kharif 2005.
He has transferred the hencoop on his pond so that the droppings from the hen may directly fall into the pond. Because of the presence of zooplankton & phytoplankton, droppings are a good source of food for the fish. The banks of the pond are used for growing leafy vegetables like Ipomoea aquatica etc.
Out of his total input of Rs. 12235.75/- (excluding internal labour value) the value of internal inputs is Rs. 9497.75/-. This means that approximately 77.62% of the total inputs used is internal.
In these last years, the percentage of organic carbon in the soil has increased. If we compare Banamali's plot with a conventional plot in the context of fossil fuel dependency, we find that Fossil fuel dependency is practically 0(zero) because all variable inputs are produced from within the farm. Most of the labour required in the production process is contributed by the farmer himself and by his family members. However he has planned his farm in such a way that drudgery is reduced.
Today Banamali Das manages his farm efficiently and has reaped economic, environmental and social benefits from it. Many farmers, after seeing the success of Banamali, has shifted to integrate farming, both within the area, and also outside it. Banamali has not only done input substitution and reduced his market dependency but also generated profits from selling considerable amount of output after meeting the necessities of his family.
The practice of integrated organic farming has given his family food security and the considerable extent of integration done in his farm has reduced his dependence on market as his farm inputs are largely being generated in the farm itself.
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Albandha is a village under the Albandha-Sarpalehana Panchayat of Birbhum district, West Bengal. Birbhum, the land of red soil, often suffers from chronic shortage of food, fodder and firewood during lean periods. A group was formed with landless and marginalized members of the village to encourage them for plantation on both sides of the Mayurakshi irrigation canal and on fallow lands, plantation with multipurpose, copicable trees for supply of fruit, fodder and firewood. Seeds, training and few tools for raising nursery were the very small support we provided. To make the group work together, for quick return some pigeon pea were also planted along with seedlings of big trees.
Assistance were extended to them on a condition that they will preserve seeds and any one else interested to do a similar kind of a work will be supplied with the seeds. Panchayat and irrigation department also agreed verbally to this arrangements and it was decided 25% of the total generated resources have to given to Panchayet. Rest of the things will be distributed amongst the group members.
 The trees started growing quickly. Initially, grazing was a problem. So group members decided not to allow any cow/goat near by the young trees. Although this angered the richer class of the village, it was mitigated through the intervention of Panchayat. And later on, the problems were solved automatically when it was observed that plenty of grass has grown up in the as grazing was prevented. The people cut those grass for their cattle. Within few months, the trees became healthy, and adjacent villages also came forward to take same kind of initiative not only in the canal bank, but they also tried fallow land beside the railway tracks and the road.
One year passed. When the group offered 25% of the produce to the Panchayat; the Panchayat returned it back to the group members as an appreciation towards the effort. Even Panchayat started to distribute few seedlings free of cost to the SH group.
Then it was the time of Panchayat election. The new elected body was the representative of the upper class of the village. The newly elected Panchayat dominated by the upper class of the village with vested interests decided to chop-off all the trees that were grown till then with so much of care. This incident taught the group few important lessons. It is now realized that a written contract should be signed with the Panchayat, as any time the members of the Panchayat may get changed. Secondly the group needs to maintain cohesiveness within itself, which require regular meeting and discussion. Thirdly an awareness campaign should be made to make every one realize that such an exercise will prove beneficial to all the people of the village, directly or indirectly.
Along the way the group has encountered many more problems and at the same time they also did emerge with some solutions. There were a few more hiccups within the group and with other regulatory bodies, which resulted in a conflict. Ultimately this effort could not be sustained in later stage.
They have planted neem, Karanj, cassia siamea, flame of the forest, wood apple, carambola, vasaka, tamarind, Bullock's heart, Vitex negundo, Castor, Common sesban, Terminalia arjuna, black plum, sisoo etc. Few trees have germinated automatically through birds. Lots of insects, birds and butterflies started returning back to the area.
But the inspiration from this example enabled the other villages to take common degraded land management programme, who were able to cross such barrier and the productive woodlot stands taller than before.
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Rokeya Bibi, lives in a village named Beliakhali at North 24 Parganas of West Bengal, an area which remains under water during the rainy season. Water takes 2-3 months to recede due to the clayey nature of the soil. Beliakhali is a Muslim dominated village; most of the villagers are daily labour. Her husband was also a daily labour when she married to him.
Rokeya initiated her garden way back in 2001 in 25 cents land. It had one small pond and few mango, guava and citrus tree here and there and 2/3 coconut tree on the boundary. To control the flooded water she deepened the small pons a little bit and used the silt to raise the garden height. During winter, the pond supplies water to the garden. She kept few ducks and raised fish in the pond. The azolla in the pond used for fish and duck feed, duck excrete used for fish feed.
 The North and east, on the waterlogged area, she did pergola (machan) using papaya tree as post to raise climber vegetables like pumpkin, cucumber, bitter gourd in Kharif and kidney bean, bottle gourd etc in Ravi. In the south she raised vegetable garden. She kept 2~3 beds for raising leafy vegetable, she rotated the varieties of leafy vegetables in such a way that throughout the year she got something for her kitchen. In the other beds she tried 40 types of vegetable mixed and raised throughout the year. She planted chilly, brinjal and tomato alongside the vegetable bed and other vegetables in the inner space of the beds. Each and every plot was segregated by productive fence with pegion pea, basil, castor, merrygold etc. Merrygold and basil play an important role as pest repellent. In a small bed Rokeya planted medicinal plants for daily ailments.
Rokeya's garden had it's own compos pit with the raw materials supplied from kitchen and garden waste. She used techniques like liquid manure and botanical pesticide to control pests.
The vegetable, fish, egg is sufficient to meet the need of the family throughout the year. She sells vegetable/fish/egg in the market too. The success of Rokeya lies in the tricky and optimum use of resources whatever she had.
For the entire year (2002) she spends about Rs.1700, in a single season her income was Rs.6768. Her husband is not a daily labour now. She has bought a sewing machine and paid back all the debts she had.
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Sarbanandapur, a tribal dominated village near Santiniketan, Birbhum, is struggling between urban influences and socio-cultural heritage of the community. Being nearer to a city, the demand of commodity is increasing day by day. People are forced to work in the brick fields, as daily laborours, rikshaw pullers and such other professions. Most of the people do not have their own land and if they have, for quick cash, they go for planting Eucalyptus! Traditionally, Santhal tribe do not have the practice of growing food. They depend on food collected from the forest, common land and river. The practice, as is expected, a rarity in a semi urban or urban melieu. Children, particularly in the age of 0-6, are most affected because of this situation as parents go to work everyday, keeping the infants under the supervision of a minor of 8 or 10. Their nutrition level, as well as the intelligence level is in a crisis. In this particular community, there were no ICDS centre in the village or near by.
We started working there way back in 2001-02, with an idea of running a village crèche with a nutrition garden and a play & learn space. In the centre, children play games, which create scope for intellectual exercise and we give them a nutritious food, which comes from the garden and from the parents (in form of egg, paddy, vegetable, potato, leafy vegetables etc). Intellect, at this age, as we know, is primarily dependent on proper nutrition. The mothers also feel free to attend their respective chores.
We started this intervention and slowly moved in to organize mothers' group for mutual cooperation through saving money, creating community grain bank etc. Slowly they have been motivated to raise small kitchen garden in their backyard and start changing food habits, where vegetable became a very important part of their meal. Basic literacy and health/nutrition/sanitation classes were also started. Fathers started taking interest also. Some of them were influenced to come out from the alcohol consumption habit through regular counselling.
 Young girls in the families were slowly introduced to various useful skills like sewing, raising seedlings, weaving as an alternative to work in the brick field.
Today, the centre is run by the school committee, selected amongst the villagers. It has its own small building with kitchen, garden, meeting space, play instruments on a land donated by the community. During the last 5 years, 30 children have been admitted in to primary school and are performing well.
 As supplement to the concept of ICDS, we have started popularizing the idea of a multipurpose centre, which have a clear impact on the nutrition status (which can not be achieved by supplying paddy only) and capacitating the community. It does not need much impact, but needs strong dedication, and the journey is ofcourse punctuated with frustration and hiccups!
However, as of yet, we have failed to achieve a considerable increase in the earning of the community, so that, 2/3 years down the line, the community can themselves run the whole show without our support. Places where we are starting afresh, we are now first focussing into this aspect rather than starting crèche first.
Very recently, with the initiative from the community, the new ICDS centre of Sarbanandapur village is initiated in collaboration with the Multipurpose Education Centre itself.
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We are in the crossroads of new age and civilization, where information is the source of strength and power. 'Right to Information' act has emphasized the role of information for smoothness and transparency in the process of development too. The recent decentralization processes by building Gram Unnayan Samiti has created scope for the people to involve directly in the process of development. Are we ready to take opportunity of these; are we ready to be in the age of information revolution? Generally speaking, we think government, scientists, officials, political leaders of all 'frame' and 'shape' will collect & use information and take decision on behalf of us. We will just sit back, enjoy and criticize! DRSCSC wants a change in this mentality.
We have initiated People's Information Centre on a vision that these centres will act as a storehouse of local information, especially related to agriculture, natural resource, alternative employment, socio-ecological and demographical data, government schemes, schemes/programme/facilities for development of the village and village people in general. The centre acts proactively to make people aware about their rights and other development issues, try to collaborate and help GUS/Panchayet by providing basic information relevant for planning.
Kultalia Deshapran PIC is initiated in East Midnapur from May 2005. They found that secondary sources of information regarding the locality are not many, and the quality of data was also very poor. So they collected data & information, which came out in a shape of booklet with local information named 'Bibarataner Dishaye Deshapran Block (Deshapran block - a journey) with the help of local NGO and government. They have created a very good rapport with local authorities and government; they held weekly seminar on various issues in Panchayet office. They do cycle rally, wall writing, village meeting regularly to popularize the concept of PIC and varios issues of development. They have almost 100 members who visit the centre regularly.
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Educational pattern in India is such that most of the children do not cross the 'barrier' of middle school. Some of them, who manage to pass out, cannot use their school education in their professional life. We are, in most cases not ready to accept the rich knowledge we gather from our relation with the Nature and our surroundings. Nor are we ready to allow the rural skills to flourish. Ideas of vocational training always revolve around pro-urban thoughts. Moreover, real small-scale enterprises are not set up due to lack of consistent group efforts in the village. This makes the village completely dependent on outside input in terms of food, fodder, fuel and other basic needs. The situation is highly alarming in the SC/ST areas.
Village Sankarpur in Dubrajpur block of Birbhum (West Bengal) was going through the same struggle. We started with a small group of 12 dropout adolescents and one unemployed youth from the village as an educator of that group in 2005. The children learned basic functional literacy, numeracy and accountancy. They acquired the skill of how to do social and natural resource survey and analyse them. They gathered demographic information, land use information, information about local biodiversity. They learned gardening and how to make compost. Last year, 2~3 children from that group were trained on how to raise seedlings for plantation on a degraded fallow land.
The collective enthusiasm and consciousness had initiated them to negotiate with a fallow land owner having a land of 5 acres. The mutual understanding was, he will allow the group to plant various fruit, fodder, timber and fire wood trees and 25% of revenue generated will be returned to him. The rest of the earning will belong to the group. The fruit, fodder, timber and fire wood will be used by the community. They started raising a nursery, planted seedlings, took proper care during the sunny and rainy days, protected them from man and animal. They were subjected to a lot of ridicule, initially.
As the gray and degraded landscape turned green, the group started raising seedlings again as a business purpose. Now, the adults started taking advice from this group on how they can create greenery in their own fallow land. Birbhum has no dirth of fallow land. This kind of real community asset building effort can be taken under NREG scheme.
 The whole effort and experiment was successful because of the sincerity of the educators and the adolescent's group. We run 18 such adolescent centre in Birbhum and Purulia. All the centres started taking initiative of running their own group business.
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Purulia, the land of undulated terrain, where annual rainfall varies between 1200 to 1600 mm. But almost the entire rain falls within a span of two to three months giving rise to a drought situation in the rest of the year. On the other hand, the raining months causes widespread erosion of topsoil. The rocky soil allows very little recharge of the underground water reserve. The long dry season often results in dried up ponds and wells. Only a single crop is possible during the rains. Scarcity of food and work forces men and women to migrate to resourceful districts. Those who stay back face starvation.
 Saldiha is a small tribal hamlet. The situation here is no different from the other parts of the district. Two farmer groups were operating in the area. DRCSC organised training sessions for them on conservation of soil and water, developing nurseries of locally suited crops and trees and on mixed cropping in fallow land. Rainwater conservation and utilizing the stored water for fallow land cultivation was targeted as one of the intervention measures. Accordingly, a pond was excavated in a plot measuring about 1.3 acres. The pond measured 180' X 160' and it was made 10' deep. It was a three-tier design. In other words, three broad steps were made on all four sides to reach the centre. These steps would remain submerged in water during the rains. Apart from the rainwater directly falling in the pond, trenches were made to channel the runoff from the forest to the pond. From the bank on all four sides a trellis was made hanging over the pond for supporting creepers yielding vegetables.
 In the dry season when the level of water in the pond fell, vegetables were grown on the steps of the pond. The pond bank was utilized for growing different vegetables, pulse crops like pigeon pea and seasonal, semi-perennial, perennial and multi-purpose trees. Fish was grown in the pond for additional income. Water stored in the pond was utilized for irrigating fallows on both sides of it.
A trench was dug up all along the boundaries of these fields for planting trees suitable for getting fodder, food and timber. Leaves of palm trees growing in this living fence were utilized as raw materials for making innovative crafts. In near future, the living fence will continue to protect the plot from browsing by cattle. Pond excavation is not at all a novel idea. It has remained as one of the important sources of water in our villages. But the uniqueness of the pond excavated by the Saldiha group lies in its three-tier design, utilization of the steps for growing vegetables in the dry season and the optimum use of the pond bank.
 Four to five persons jointly owned the land where the pond has been excavated. They have given this land to this group of 30 farmers on lease for 30 years. On completion of the lease period, the ownership of the pond will return to its original owners, but the group will be entitled to utilize the pond water to irrigate the fallows they are cultivating now. It implies that the group cultivation of the fallows will continue even after the lease period. In accordance with the total need of the 30 families, yields from the pond, pond bank and newly cultivated fallows was equally shared among the members of the group. After that, from the remaining harvest, a portion was distributed free among the villagers beyond the group.
 The entire pond excavation activity was done on food for work basis.The entire activity has cost Rs.2,18,800 out of which the contribution of the people has been to the tune of Rs.57,000. The program has been able to generate 2,979 man-days for pond excavation and 831 man-days for mixed cropping on the steps, pond bank and field.
Presently authorities from three Panchayats are holding talks with DRCSC's Purulia Project Office to mobilise the SH groups to reconstruct twenty ponds in the above manner.
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Purulia, the land of Chhou dance but the crops doesn't dance to the tune of Madal throughout the year. Only during rainy days, paddy is the only crop they grow, sometime very few vegetables peeps out during winter. Mehi and Rangadi are 2 tribal dominated village, where 34 families came together to do community mixed cropping intervention in 25 bighas of fallow degraded land.
 As they decided doing this intervention, a small pond was dug for storing rain water and using it for the purpose of irrigation. The group started growing vegetable on the bank of the pond. The boundary of the main 27 bigha plot was done by various trees which might act as supplier of fodder, firewood, fruit or medicine. There were long height trees like debt plum, plum, jujube, neem, Indian coal tree, custard apple, wood apple etc and short height trees like pigeon pea, rossel, karamcha in the inner side.
They started ploughing the plot by applying silt, wood ash, azetobactor, and rhyzobiam. The 22 bigha plot in rangadi was divided in to 31 plots with 17 varieties of crop done in a mixed way during kharif which includes minor millets (nijer, kodo, ragi, bajra etc), oil seeds (sesame, mesta etc), pulses (rajma, green gram, horse gram, varios types of beans etc) and vegetables (ladies finger, ridged gourd etc). In Kharif 2004, they earned Rs.2940, 82 days of labour, vegetable for own consumption and fodder.
 The other 3 bigha plot and Mehi were ploughed with cow dung, azetobactor and rhizobium. The entire land was divided in to 5 plots. Each plot had rossel, pegion pea and maize in the outer lines and various locally available minor millets, pulses, beans and ground nut were there in the inner side. In Kharif 2004, they earned Rs.3673 along with the fodder and vegetables for consumption. 82 labour days were created.
But what will happen to seed? Do we need to go to shop every year? They started seed saving unit in every household, which created scope of seed exchange too. Now they are getting regular production in 3 seasons. Some neighboring villages has started taking same kind of initiative too, even local government officials has shown interest to replicate the concept.
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