How Are Women in Rural India a Big Part of the Farming Society?
‘In the Indian Himalayas a pair of bulls works 1,064 hours, a man 1,212 hours, and a woman 3,485 hours in a year on a one-hectare farm, a figure which illustrates women’s significant contribution to agricultural production.’ — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Sustainable Development Department
Women Farmers Going Back to the Grassroots
But if you thought gender discrimination only weighed you down in your white-collar job, you will be surprised to know that most female farmers are not even recognized as such.
In farming, her role is even more undermined till some of them rose and became a force to reckon with and wrecked all stereotypes that were built for her, often not by her.
Symbolically, ‘The Better India’ presents the story of Rita Kamila, who unassisted achieved a sustainable source of livelihood by conjuring the right mix of farming and animal husbandry.
And she did not tread an easy path, it was in one of the difficult terrains of the world, the Sunderbans. Rita brought about this transformation by converting her farm to organic over the course of the last few years, but ahead of the new wave of return to organic farming and its boon.
Today she is a self-sufficient farmer and having struck that perfect combination of farming and animal husbandry, she has changed the face of agriculture as we knew it.
This combination is based on the age-old practices of ecological farming that Rita has integrated back into traditional farming.
It is almost a mesmerizing experience to watch the entire supply chain process where every phase of farming produces next-to-nil wastes as she has very biologically utilized all by-products to cultivate a modern organic farm.
The biogas is used as cooking fuel and the residue is judiciously recycled to provide nutrients to crops. She has also installed a bio-digester plant that generates biogas from farm waste such as livestock manure and fish waste.
Easily the unsung heroes of any war, she is out in the field literally and continues to consistently firefight at the home front and every front of life. It is this faceless force that handles, if not more then, at least half the workload and hence is a contributor to half the economy of India, not indirectly, but directly.
Today, Rita’s farm is prosperous enough to ensure a healthy supply for home consumption. She didn’t go to any agricultural university but it is applied sciences that she used to her benefit.
She serves not just as a role model but as an advisor to her community. She has been recognized and rewarded for her prudence and logical application.
More Power to #WomenWhoFarm
Elsewhere in the country, Padma Bai only cultivated cotton, oilseeds and pulses on her 3-acre land till a few years back. Today she is the Sarpanch of eight villages with more than 2000 farmers.
What was her success strategy? No, the target was not to be the head person of the village but she earned that through her dedication and judicious decisions. ‘Hiring Centre for agricultural tools’ was her brainchild, a very simple concept, why didn’t someone think of it before?
Padma Bai made it easy for the small-holder farmer to cut down on his expenditure of procuring farm equipment; such as pick-axes, sickle, spades, hoes and wheelbarrows.
Most of the poor farmers would mortgage all their meagre belongings just for these basic tools. Padma Bai changed that. She brought in many firsts to the Indian agriculture industry, not as a farmer but as an agro entrepreneur, as a female head woman, and an advisor in a field largely considered the male domain.
Notwithstanding the previous failures, she connected the world to her village by literally creating 2 concrete and 1 fair weather dry mud roads.
Padma Bai didn’t stop at that and as the head woman, taking on bigger responsibilities revived the dependable good-old practice of rainwater harvesting and even installed a water tank to bring in clean drinking water for the school children.
All this with some monetary help from the government that she approached herself.
The 10th agriculture census 2015–16 survey showed that the proportion of farms that are operated by women rose from 12.8% in 2010–11 to 13.9% in 2015–16, signifying that more women are managing farm operations.
Reuters reports that 70% of the agricultural work is done by women, they might not drive the tractor or transport their produce in most cases but anyone would know that the rest of the tasks, such as sowing, reaping, watering, weeding, are doubly manually extensive and hence physically exhausting.
Women today, a tad belated, is recognized as the farmers, not just the farmhands.
