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Women Transforming Indian Agriculture

A Collection of Case Studies fromIndira Kranthi Patham of Andhra Pradesh and

Kudumbashree Mission of Kerala

April 2013


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About LAbout LAbout LAbout LAbout Landesaandesaandesaandesaandesa

Landesa, earlier known as Rural Development Institute, provides technical, research and implementationsupport to national and state governments in India to develop innovative laws and programs centred on accessto land and secure land ownership to empower rural communities to end systematic poverty.

Most of the world’s poorest families live in rural areas and depend on land to survive, but don’t have rights tothe land they farm. Landesa has partnered with governments to help provide secure land rights to millions offamilies since 1967. In India, Landesa works mainly in the states of West Bengal, Odisha, Karnataka andAndhra Pradesh. Landesa is beginning to expand its work in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand andMeghalaya.

Credits:Credits:Credits:Credits:Credits:

The study was commissioned by UNWOMEN and implemented by Landesa.

Landesa conducted the field interviews and authored this report.

Field interviews: Mandakini Pant, Jaya Laxmi Nair, VijayaUsha Rani, Landesa

Authorship: Ashok Kumar Sircar, Mandakini Pant and Sohini Paul, Landesa

Editing and designing: Anisa Draboo and Canica Gaur, Landesa

Pictures:Landesa

December 2013, New Delhi

© Landesa 2013Published in India

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, inany form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without priorpermission.

www.landesa.org

Layout and Print:Kriti Creative [email protected]#9873249374


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0.0 Executive Summary 5

1.0 Introduction 71.1 Purpose of the document 71.2 Context of the document 71.3 Content of the document 8

2.0 Women Empowerment Approaches in IKP and KDS 92.1 Brief description of the two approaches 92.2 CMSA- an initiative of IKP 122.3 Collective Leasing - an initiative of Kudumbashree 142.4 Focus of the Case Studies 15

3.0 Case studies from Andhra Pradesh 163.1 Land-Leasing: From Individual Subsistence to Collective Enterprise 16

3.2 Decentralized Agricultural Extension: Women as providers of extension services 183.3 Women as Technology Provider 203.4 Women as Leaders of Change: Many Hats to Wear 223.5 CMSA Leading the Way to Household Food Security 24

4.0 Case studies from Kerala 264.1 Collective Leasing: Transformation of Women as Cultivators 264.2 Institutional Convergence: A Key to Success for Women’s Collective Leasing 284.3 Multiple Marketing Channels for Women Cultivators 304.4 Women Master Trainers: Peer Educators for programme scale up 334.5 Labour Pooling: An innovation born out of necessity 36

5.0 Overall Lessons and Way forward 385.1 Positive Lessons 385.2 A few Concerns 395.3 Way forward 39

Contents


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ADS Area Development Society

BPL Below Poverty Line

CA Cluster Activist

CDS Community Development Society

CMSA Community Managed SustainableAgriculture

CRP Community Resource Person

DRDA District Rural Development Agency

FFS Farmers’ Field School

ICRISAT International Crop ResearchInstitute for Semi Arid Tropic

IKP Indira Kranthi Patham

IPM Integrated Pest Management

KDS Kudumbashree

KVK Krishi Vigyan Kendra

JLG Joint Liability Group

LSG Local Self Government

MKSP Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojona

Acronyms

MGNREGA Mahatma Gandhi National RuralEmployment Guarantee Act

NABARD National Bank for Agricultureand Rural Development

MS Mandal Samakhya

NHG Neighbourhood Group

NPM Nutrient and Pest Management

POP Poorest of the Poor

SERP Society for Elimination of RuralPoverty

SHG Self Help Group

SMS Sashya Mitra Sangha

SRI System of Rice Intensification

VA Village Activist

VFPCK Vegetable Fruit PromotionCouncil of Kerala

VO Village Organization

ZS Zilla Samakhya


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0.0 Executive Summary

An accepted approach of women’s empowerment and building livelihoods of the rural poor is tocombine both aims in building strong women’s collectives from below, and organising livelihoodsactivities in which the women are central in ownership, management and operations. Kerala’sKudumbashree (KDS) and Andhra Pradesh’s Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP) are two programmes that areoften cited as having achieved both women’s empowerment and rural livelihoods successfully onscale. Both have built multi-tier women’s collectives from village level upwards that serve as theinstitutional backbone of every intervention that are implemented to improve the lives of the ruralpoor. Of particular interest are two sub programmes called Community Managed SustainableAgriculture (CMSA) within IKP and Collective Leasing within KDS where women’s economicempowerment is designed and executed in the context of women in agriculture. Both these ‘women inagriculture’ programmes have brought in lakhs of women as main actors in changing existingpatterns in Indian agriculture and have informed the formulation of a national women farmer’sempowerment programme called Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojona currently being implementedin 12 states reaching at least 2 million women.

This document captures five good practices each that emerged within CMSA and collective leasing.These good practices refer to a variety of interventions leading women to take the lead in cultivation,technology transfer and adoption, resource pooling, bringing back large tracts of fallow land intocultivation and marketing, and in the process transforming themfrom a housewife cum wage labourerto change agents in agriculture. Both programmes are successful in achieving multiple convergenceswith state, civil society and market actors in marketing, training, new initiatives, and the like. Thisdocument especially anchors the centrality of the women’s collectives that have played pivotal role inall these endeavours.

A number of positive learning and a few concerns have been pointed out in the document:-

1. The multi-tier institutional backbone of women’s collectives is the key to all successes that havebeen achieved in these two programmes of CMSA and collective leasing.

2. Women are playing multi-dimensional micro and macro roles and responsibilities in both CMSAand collective leasing as planners, technology carriers, mobilisers, managers, entrepreneurs,negotiators and even innovators.


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3. Both the programmes have transformed the women as the primary actors in crop managementthus reducing the traditional role of men in the act.

4. According to women, their mobility has vastly enhanced, their personal savings have improved,and their respect in the family has improved. In most cases, the women are now an earningmember within the family.

5. Both programs engage women as the peer educator, demonstration farmer, and master trainer.The women have broken the myth that agricultural pedagogy and extension services are a maledomain.

6. Convergence has been a key to the successes achieved. The examples are many — MGNREGA,Agriculture Department, Gram Panchayats, Digital Green, mobile technologies, marketingcooperatives, etc. which have been vital for the successes that have been achieved so far.

7. Creating capacity within the community has been the primary capacity building strategy followedin both the programmes. From the experience so far, this has worked out well.

8. One major concern is about the legality of collective leasing. While collective leasing is certainlyworking on the ground, illegality of leasing in law is a constraint that needs to be addressed.These two programmes provide ample evidence to make a robust case of liberalizing the laws ofleasing in favour of the poor.

9. Although the women have certainly progressed a lot in their engagement in agriculture, time hascome now to look at more structural issues of women in agriculture, from a truly genderperspective. It would be useful to apply any of the available gender frameworks in agriculture toassess how the two programmes fare. This is more relevant in the context of MKSP that now worksin 12 states aiming to reach 2 million women

10. Both the IKP and KDS Missions have structured gender programmes that mostly work on domesticviolence and related issues. There is enormous scope for the gender programmes to get involvedwith gender issues in women in agriculture that are so foundational that such associations can goa long way to engender Indian agriculture to the extent that agricultural assets become moreengendered, the women are recognized as farmers, credit, insurance, and other supports flow tothe women.

11. While the convergence efforts are exciting, for long term sustainability some of these convergenceefforts need to be institutionalized. Kerala’s strong Gram Panchayats provide one such pathwayfor institutionalization, but may not be the only pathway when it comes to other states.


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Ever since the self-help group (SHG) mechanism became established as one replicable pathway ofthe women’s social and economic empowerment in India, several state and non-state programmesbased on women’s self-help group mechanism have been and continue to be implemented withsignificant successes. Kudumbashree (KDS) programme of Kerala and Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP)programme of Andhra Pradesh are the two best known programmes. These two programmes havebeen able to mobilize very large numbers of rural women into multi-tiered collectives that haveprovided the backbone for implementing several thematic initiatives spanning from agriculturaldevelopment, micro enterprise, product marketing, health & education, gender equality, and others.

1.1 Purpose of the document

This document captures several good practices from these two state initiatives in the domain ofwomen in agriculture. The purpose of this document is three fold: a) To learn from the good practicesof women in agriculture from KDS and IKP, b) To disseminate the practices and learning to a wideraudience and, in particular, to the implementers of similar projects of women in agriculture, and c) Toidentify the issues that need to be weaved into such good practices to make them even more effectiveand relevant to rural women and their lives.

1.2 Context of the document

The specific context of this document emerges from two mutually connected realities of rural India.These are:-

1) Indian agriculture is increasingly ‘feminized’ in terms of labour; most of the work in agricultureand allied activities are done by women, as the men are increasingly moving out to the cities andtowns for work. This is in contrast to the identity of a farmer still being a man owning land, asrecognized in the agricultural policy of the country. The women are providing more than unskilledlabour work, and yet they are not recognized as farmers.

2) To change this reality, the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India has taken up alarge national programme called Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojona (MKSP) (women farmers’empowerment programme) under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, in which about 2million rural women engaged in agriculture are being empowered through multiple interventions

0.1 Introduction


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by state and non-state actors in 12 Indian states. The overall goal of this national programme isas follows:

■ Build strong community institutions of women farmers;

■ Popularise Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture- low cost sustainable practices suchas NPM/IPM/integrated nutrient management;

■ Promote and enhance food and nutritional security at household and community level;

■ Reduce drudgery for women farmers;

■ Focus on landless, small and marginal farmers as project participants;

■ Value addition and marketing and

■ Build resilience to climate change

This document captures the case studies from KDS and IKP to inform the MKSP programme and itsapproaches. Specifically, it deals with cases where women have moved ahead and are making significantintellectual and economic contribution to Indian agriculture. The document shows the women featuredhere are no longer the labour, in a given mode of production strictly owned, controlled and managed bymen, but are emerging as the change makers themselves. This context of the document also raises thequestion if more needs to be done to realize the goal of empowering rural women and thus the documentidentifies the need to adapt these experiences with the wider emerging realities of women farmers inIndia.

1.3 Content of the document

The document has four parts: the next section i.e. section 2 discusses the two state programmes of KDSand IKP and situates the women in agriculture programme within the two programmes’ objectives. Theoverall framework of the collection of case studies is discussed next in the section to provide the basis ofthe next two sections i.e. sections 3 & 4 capture the 10 case studies, five each from IKP and KDS. Thesection 5 discusses the positive lessons, points out a few concerns and the way forward.


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2.0 Women EmpowermentApproaches in KDS and IKP

Both approaches have strikingly commonfeatures and have equally striking differences.The first common feature is that both the statemissions were set up as a governmentcontrolled Society registered under the Societies’Act of the respective states. The Society structurehas given the programmes several distinctadvantages: the freedom of mission drivenhiring, innovative programme planning, lesscontrol by government’s treasury rules, multi-scheme convergence, fund raising, humanresource deployment and development, andothers. The second common feature is thecommonality of multi-tiered rural womencollectives as the institutional backbone of allprogrammatic interventions. While AP has afour tier women’s collective structure, Kerala hasa three tier structure of the women’s collectives.The third commonality is the constantendeavour to build women’s ownership of allprogramme interventions through bottom upplanning under overall programmatic thrustsdetermined at the state level. And the fourthcommon feature is that women are taking thelead in local level executions of all types ofprogrammes.

The most striking difference between the twoapproaches is how they engage with thePanchayati Raj Institutions. In AP the women’scollectives at Village-Mandal-Zilla levels are

directly engaged with the government’sdepartments through the Society, almostbypassing the democratically elected PanchayatiRaj Institutions; in Kerala, these womencollectives have become partners to the strongPanchayati Raj Institutions thus deepening localdemocracy and decentralization. Anotherstriking difference is that while KDS has itsmission structure at the state and district levels,IKP mission structure is situated only at the statelevel.

With these opening remarks, we will, in thefollowing few paragraphs, describe the mainfeatures of the two approaches as it emergedthrough more than a decade of works.

2.1 Brief Description of the twoapproaches

Indira Kranthi Patham

Andhra Pradesh Government established TheSociety for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) in1998 with a mission to reduce and eventuallyeliminate rural poverty in the state. With WorldBank support, it initiated a pilot programmecalled Velugu that eventually grew into a pan-state programme called Indira Kranthi Patham(IKP) covering all the 1098 Mandals in 22districts. IKP is a large multidimensionalprogramme that aims at empowering rural


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women and their families through buildingwomen owned collectives of SHGs-VillageOrganisations-Mandal Samakhya-ZillaSamakhya based on women representativeselected at every tier, and bound by micro-finance practices of thrift and credit. Thesecollectives are the building blocks that carryvarious livelihoods programmes by the womenand for the women through training, technology,and finance and other inputs as well as takingup delivery of various state benefits andentitlements to the rural poor.

The IKP programme now has resulted in theformation of 10.54 lakh SHGs with 11.6 millionmembers. The SHGs are federated into 39,584Village Organisations, 1098 MandalSamakhyas and 22 Zilla Samakhyas. All theseSHGs, VOs, Mandal Samakhyas, and ZillaSamakhyas are linked with nationalized banks,who have lent nearly Rs.14570 million to thesecollectives. Moreover, 16 fisherwomen MandalSamakhyas, 125 disabled Mandal Samakhyas,and 17 Cenchu Tribe Mandal Samakhya havebeen formed out of representatives of thesespecial category women’s SHGs.

Several programmes have been implementedriding on the backbone of these collectives thatinclude banking credit for the SHGs, microfinance, micro insurance, gender equality,health and nutrition, land dispute resolution andothers. All of these programmes had andcontinue to have clear focus on improvinglivelihoods in its multiple facets. The mostdistinguishing characteristic of theseinterventions is how each of them havesuccessfully been carried by these collectives ofthe women taking the lead in almost all thepossible roles and responsibilities relevant to thesuccess of the programmes.

Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture(CMSA) is one such livelihoods focusedprogramme within IKP that specifically dealswith issues of increasing agricultural income,

popularizing sustainable agriculture techniques,improving household nutritional security, andenhancing diversified agricultural production.The most distinctive feature of the programmethat makes it relevant to this document is itsfocus on women farmers. It aims at creating apool of women demonstration farmers, womentechnology trainers, women extension workers,women agri-entrepreneurs, and provision oftechnology and knowledge inputs focused onwomen. Although the programme’s overt aim isto shift the focus of agriculture to moresustainable methods and techniques, from theexisting capital intensive, energy intensive, soildestructing crops and their management, theprogramme has cleverly weaved the interventionwith women as the agency for introducing andcarrying this shift. Our present documentation ofcase studies will draw good practices fromCMSA so that some of the practices can bereplicated elsewhere.

Kudumbashree Mission

Kudumbashree meaning prosperity (shree) ofthe family (kudumbam), is the name of the statepoverty eradication mission of government ofKerala for which a Society was formed in 1998under the relevant Societies Act. KudumbashreeMission came into being as a culmination of aprocess of community mobilization taken upinitially within the community led povertyidentification in Alappuzha Municipality in theearly nineties, followed by the district levelcommunity based nutrition programme effort inMalappuram District in 1994. The politicaldecentralization process initiated in 1996 gavea fillip to the process of strengthening women’sparticipation in governance structures. TheWomen’s Component Plan of the state allotted10% of the plan budget to Local SelfGovernments (LSGs), making it essential tobring about meaningful participation of womenin formulating and executing plans.


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SRI paddy being grown with NPM techniques under CMSA , Vishakhapatnam

The Kudumbashree Mission waslaunched in May 1998, to createa state-wide base of communityorganizations of women thatwork in tandem with local self-governments for povertyeradication and women’sempowerment in the context ofensuring food security. By 2004,the Kudumbashree CommunityOrganization network had beenestablished in all the 1072Gram Panchayat areas of thestate. Much like in IKP, KDS toobuilt a three tier structure ofwomen groups at the villagelevel, Area DevelopmentSocieties (ADS) at the ward level,and Community Development Societies (CDS)at the Gram Panchayat level, comprising ofelected women representatives at each level.While the CDS is a registered society, theneighbourhood women groups (NHGs) as theyare called and the ADS are informalorganizations of women. Unlike IKP, it’s only theNHGs that practice thrift and credit, the ADSand CDS are not micro finance entities inKerala. Also unlike IKP, the Kudumbashree hasits district Mission Units filled with professionalstaff, instead of elected women of ZillaSamakhyas that manages all the programmes.So far up to March 2012, the KDS missioncovers 2.14 lakhs NHGs covering 38 lakhwomen, represented by ADSs in 19789 wardsand CDSs in all 1072 Gram Panchayats of thestate.

KDS also runs a number of programmes basedon the three tier women’s collectives, whichinclude implementation of MGNREGA, micro-finance programme through bank linkages,micro-enterprise programme based on activitygroups, value chain integration programme, aswell as running other social developmentprogrammes like destitute rehabilitation, childdevelopment programmes, etc.

The programme of KDS that is of relevance tothis document is the women’s collective farmingprogramme initiated in 2004. This programmefocuses on women farmers who are encouragedto form special activity groups among the NHGsto pursue collective farming. These were initiallycalled activity groups and were later renamedas Joint Liability Groups (JLGs) when NABARDbrought in the concept of collateral free lendingto JLGs of rural women. The programme’s focusis to provide enabling support to JLGs forleasing in land from landowners on oral orplain paper agreements, and thereafter,providing finance, technology and materialsupport to these groups for successful cultivationand sale of food and nutrition crops in additionto home consumption. Here too the programmeaims to build women farmers’ technicalknowledge and practical experience of cropproduction and management, enhance theirability to deal with the market mechanism totheir benefit, create a pool of women extensionworkers and technical resource persons andthus make them the change agents of revivingagriculture in Kerala that otherwise have beenaffected by upward mobility of men towardscities and towns in India and abroad. The


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quantitative achievements are significant: morethan 2.67 lakh women are involved incultivation in 49 thousand plus hectare of landthat otherwise was lying fallow in the state.

It’s no coincidence therefore that both CMSAand women’s collective farming programmesare a part of Mahila Kisan SashaktikranPariyojana (MKSP). They function as ProjectImplementing Agencies in Andhra Pradesh andKerala respectively. Both bring in enormousvalue to MKSP by ways of prior experience ofprogramming with women farmers, based onthe institutional strength of multi-tiered grassroot women’s collectives, and strong linkageswith either local self-governments as in Keralaor with the various state departments.

Since all the case studies of good practices inthis document have been collected from theexperience of CMSA and Women’s CollectiveFarming under IKP and KDS, it is critical thatthese two programmes are discussed in somedetails so as to delineate the connection withthe good practices that emerged anddeservedocumentation.

2.2 CMSA- an initiative of IKP

CMSA aims at changing crop managementpractices from an energy intensive, capitalintensive, and chemical fertilizer & chemicalpesticide driven production techniques to moreecologically and financially sustainabletechniques. The currently practiced agriculturetechnology has already depleted soil nutritionand water table, reduced bio diversity on theone hand, and has also made agricultureunviable because of high inputs costs andinadequate return on investment. Moreover, theexisting model of agricultural production suitsonly those who can afford to invest in scale, andtherefore are unsuitable for many marginal andsmall farmers and agricultural labourers who donot have the needed financial resources.

However, CMSA has very cleverly weaved thisintervention with women’s economicempowerment by making the woman theprimary vehicle and owner of this intervention.This serves the dual purpose of changing cropmanagement technology and creating a newagricultural change maker, namely the women.

Currently CMSA is being implemented in11,000 villages in 653 Mandals of 22 districtson 38.71 lakh acres with 19.67 lakh farmers.There are three major strands in CMSAintervention: a) The Poorest of Poor Strategy(POP), b) 36ft. x 36ft. models and c) SRI1 paddy.The POP strategy aims to reach out to thepoorest, often the landless agricultural labourerswho lease in land for cultivation. It encouragesand provides technological and financialsupport to these labourers to lease in land anddeploy sustainable agri-techniques forproduction of food crops. The leasing in istypically done either individually or collectivelyby the selected families, sometimes withfacilitation by the VO. However, the POPstrategy is not limited only to the leased land,and even supports marginal farmers holding upto 1 acre plots. The SRI system of paddy ispropagated among small and marginal farmersowning about 1 to 2.5 acres of land of whichthey are encouraged to cultivate SRI Paddy on0.25 acres and use another 0.25 acres for a36ft. x 36ft. seven tier model of mostlyvegetable and fruit production in the remaining0.25 acres to earn a net income of Rs. 50,000/- and to provide food and nutritional security atthe household level.

While all the three interventions refer to cropmanagement techniques, the relevance to thisdocumentation lies in the way it is owned andmanaged by women’s collectives at the village,Mandal and Zilla levels. The villageorganization (VO) has a key role in managingthe CMSA programme on the ground. The VOs

1System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is a methodology aimed at increasing the yield of rice produced. SRI is adapted to rain-fed (unirrigated) conditions withtransplanting superseded by direct seeding sometimes.


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choose women village activists (VAs) who arehired by Mandal Samakhyas. The VAs identifythe interested women farmers among the SHGsto become CMSA farmers, and then facilitateformation of farmers groups called Sashya MitraSanghas(SMSs) and help the VO managevarious aspects of CMSA. A group of 20-25such women farmers form a SMS. The farmerSHGs together with the VO develop a CMSAplan on capacity building, production,maintaining internal controls and marketing.The VO is entrusted with overall programmemanagement at the village level and is thecentre of all CMSA activities in the village.

One special feature of CMSA programme isthat it accepts men farmers’ SMSs as well.Thesemen farmers have to be spouse of the respectivewomen SHG members. In such cases, thesemen farmer SMSs have to undergo trainingconducted by the women CRPs and CAs.

The Mandal Samakhya monitors programmeimplementation of the VOs and coordinates withresource NGOs. The Mandal Samakhya alsocoordinates the delivery and training andextension services to the SMSs through ClusterActivists (CA) assigned for a group of fivevillages who organise training programmes,field visits and provide technical resources to thefarmer SHGs. This may be called downwardresponsibilities of the Mandal Samakhyas.However, the Mandal Samakhyas also haveupward responsibilities. They coordinate withthe district level Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs)and the resource NGOs of the district. TheMandal Samakhyas have agreements with sevenNGOs namely Sweep in Srikakulam District,Kovel in Vishakhapatnam District, Jattu Trust inVizianagaram District, RIDS and FORD inAnantapur District and Voice in NalgondaDistrict. IKP at the state level hasan agreementwith Digital Green, a technologycommunication group for training oncommunity video films. The NGOs mostlyprovide technical support in the form of training,

community mobilisation, FFS training, troubleshooting and marketing.

The Zilla Samakhyas have a five member CMSAsubcommittee formed out of successful womenfarmers. The sub-committee overseesimplementation and forms tie-ups for marketingby negotiating with private sector. They alsodevelop partnerships with NGOs who providetechnical support and training. Zilla Samakhyasalso coordinate with District Rural DevelopmentAgency (DRDA) to link up with variousgovernment programmes. For example, CMSAactivities have been synchronized withMGNREGA which funded preparation ofcompost pits and digging of village tanks as apart of the public works programme. The CMSAsub-committee regularly visits FFSs and farmerfields to monitor progress and potentialbottlenecks, and monitor district-wide progress.The CMSA sub-committees at the mandal anddistrict level visit the field for 10 days everymonth to observe field level progress. They alsoparticipate once a month to review performanceat the mandal and district level.

As can be seen, the CMSA programme isentirely operated and managed by womencollectives at the village, mandal and districtlevels. The CAs and VAs are all women and theyare accountable to the collectives. The leadersof the collectives coordinate with the NGOs,KVKs, DRDAs, and monitor programmeprogress. The recipients of the programmeinterventions such as the POP farmers, theSMSs, and SRI cum 36/36 farmers are mostlywomen. The women collectives have a paymentstructure for the VAs who are paid Rs. 2000/-per month and in addition Rs. 1000/- permonth as incentive. The CAs are paidremuneration of Rs. 6000/- per month and Rs.2000/- per month as incentive. The members ofMandal Samakhya are paid Rs. 100/- per daywhen they attend meetings or travel to the fieldand actual travel expenses while members ofZilla Samakhya are paid Rs. 150/-per day andactual travel expenses.


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Considering the gigantic work being operatedand managed by women, we have consideredfive case studies to capture the thrusts of theprogramme.

2.3 Collective Leasing: An initiativeof Kudumbashree

While farming has always been one of thelivelihoods interventions of the KDS apart frommicro enterprises, the collective farmingpractices emerged from the community groupsas a response to the dual challenge of revivingagriculture as well as providing the women withenough livelihood opportunities. Agriculture inKerala has seen slow exodus of people goingout for other vocations resulting in vast tracts ofland lying fallow and unproductive. The womengroups on the other hand needed opportunitiesnear home and most of such opportunitiescould come from agriculture. Thereforecollective farming by women groups, where thewomen leased in such fallow or cultivable wastelands from mostly absentee landowners becamea feasible solution. The reason why thecollective farming is relevant to thisdocumentation is because, like CMSA, this toois almost entirely operated and managed by thewomen of the three tier collectives.

In Kerala, the women at the village level aregrouped into what are called neighbourhoodgroups (NHGs). Initially, these groups had morethan 20 members each, but later they wereregrouped to 20 members and less followingNABARD’s SHG principle. The name howeverremained. The NHGs at the villages selectsinterested women among each NHG to form acollective farming group. These groups arespecially registered by ADS and CDS. Collectivefarming women groups are one such activitygroup. These groups were encouraged tonegotiate with landowners (who sometimes maybe one among them) to lease in, her/his land,in which the ADS and CDS often play afacilitation role. A typical farming group consistsof 4-10 members and the land they cultivate is

mostly leased in land. The majority of thelandless women’s groups have leased in landfor cultivation through oral agreements withprivate land owners, though some of them havesigned a lease/rental agreement with the landowner under the trust of the Gram Panchayat.The ADS-CDS and Gram Panchayats oftenassist these groups to find land for cultivationand also help in negotiating the lease rent withthe land owner.

KDS permits only a narrow range of food cropsto be done by collective farming. Plantationcrops like rubber, coffee, and tea are forbidden.Experience has shown that the collective farminggroups have been most successful in doingbanana and paddy for which they receiveincentives through the ADS and CDS.

The ADS has a very specific role in the collectivefarming programme. While they facilitateformation of such collective farming groups,their main contribution is to link these groups toMGNREGA works to develop the land andmake it fit for cultivation. This is easily done bythe ADS as in Kerala the ADS’s operating areabeing co-terminus with Gram Sabha, it isrecognized as an implementation agency of theMGNREGA. The collective farming groupsdiscuss with the ADS leaders of their needs ofMGNREGA works, and often supplementaryschemes are prepared by the ADS and theMGNREGA support is operationalized.

The CDS represents all the women members ofthe NHGs of a Gram Panchayat. GramPanchayats in Kerala typically represent 30,000populations. The CDS too usually is a largebody. The CDS’s office is in the GramPanchayat’s premises that ensure stronglinkages with Kerala’s Panchayati RajInstitutions. For the collective farming groups,the CDS provides the financial assistance,liaison with the Banks for financial assistance, aswell as with Gram Panchayat for technical andfinancial support. The Krishi Bhavans - theagricultural extension centers of the agriculture


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department in Kerala are under the jurisdictionof the Gram Panchayats which is why theirtechnical support depends on GramPanchayat’s instructions. The CDS is alsoresponsible for monitoring the programme intheir area.

As a whole this is a simpler model than CMSA,where technology inputs are less intensive, andare locally available. The Krishi Bhavans play acrucial role to train the farming groups in weedsmanagement, micro-irrigation, inter-cropping,pest management, and other process andquality control measures. The farming groupsreceive short term loans from KDS through CDS,where they are entitled to an interest subsidy of5%. An incentive mechanism is available toCDS based on two criteria: expansion ofcollective farming area and output fromcollective farming practice.

Like in IKP, the entire collective farmingprogramme at the CDS-ADS and NHG levels isoperated and managed by women. Theynegotiate lease rates, make training plans,MGNREGA plans, work with Gram Panchayatsand Krishi Bhavans for technical support, dealswith banks for financial support, and mostimportantly deals with KDS leadership at thedistrict and state levels discussing, planning,negotiating, bargaining for effectiveimplementation of the programme. Theprogramme impact is impressive; 49000 Ha outof 75000 Ha of fallow and cultivable wasteland has already been brought under collectivefarming by 2.65 lakh women.

We have considered stories from variousaspects of the women’s endeavour connected tocollective farming to reflect on their overallachievements through the programme.

2.4 Focus of the case studies

The selection of case studies from such largestate wide programmes needs to follow certainfoci. Keeping in mind that the overall purpose ofthis document is to learn from the goodpractices and also point out what can bedone while adapting from these good practices,in choosing the case studies we haveconsidered the following principles that capture:

1. Women’s leadership in the process ofintervention

2. The change in women’s life as a result of theintervention

3. Women as main actors carrying theintervention as facilitators, CAs, VAs, andothers.

4. The collectives’ enabling ability of providingmultiple upward and downward linkages foreffective programme implementation.

5. Women as technology providers

These principles help document theachievements of individual women, the goodpractices carved in the processes, women’sindividual and collective agency and thetransformation of their identity: from ahousewife-cum-wage labour to that of a leader,manager, technology provider, and main actorin the agricultural change.


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3.0 Case Studies fromAndhra Pradesh

3.1 Case Study I

Land-Leasing: From IndividualSubsistence to Collective Enterprise

Padmamma, Veeramani, Sujatha, Ratnammaand Bhagamma belong to landless agriculturalworker families of Raipally Village in ZahirabadMandal of Medak District, where 87% of ruralpopulation is considered BPL. These womenbelong to the Dalit Madiga community that fallsat the lowest rung of the socio-economichierarchy. Typically, their families are landlessagricultural wage workers; the women seekwork in agriculture, while the men look for workas coolies or cart pullers; work that is outside ofagriculture. These women are members ofdifferent SHGs of the same village. The mainthrusts of the SHG activities are thrift and credit,but they have not been able to graduate tolivelihoods activities individually or collectivelyother than continuing with wage labour work.The POP intervention brought to them anopportunity for the first time. As mandated byIKP, the village activist working for the VO foundthese women and five others suitable for thePOP intervention that focuses on land leasingand cultivation using CMSA technique.

Meenamma, the woman VA encouraged thesewomen and facilitated their leasing in of 0.5acre of land each for all 10 of them, totaling

five acres, in which they would grow paddy byusing the inexpensive SRI method in 0.25 acreeach and use the rest 0.25 acre each tocultivate vegetables under the 36 ft. x 36 ft.multi-tier mulching method. Leasing in requiresthem to pay lease rent that they cannot afford,plus they do not have resources for production.The POP strategy has developed a systemicanswer to that. The women would get a loan ofRs. 10,000 to 15000 per acre each dependingon their request, to pay the lease rent.Additionally, they would also get a workingcapital of Rs. 2000-3000 each at 3% interest,of which 2% is kept by the SHG. The SHG paysback the principal and 1% to the VO. Theestimate is that they would be able to pay backthe loan from the sale of the crops.

Once the VAs identified people like Padmammathrough discussion among the SHGs in thevillage, the information flows to the VO’s NPM-CMSA subcommittee who then asks for theabove funds to the Mandal Samakhya. TheMandal Samakhya on the basis of this requestreleases POP fund as mentioned earlier, to theVO for onward release to the respective SHGs,these women belong to. The women get thefund from their respective SHGs.

Padmamma et al. were excited but they did nothave any exposure or training in suchtechniques. However, they realized if they could


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pool in their resources tojointly cultivate the leasedland, they will reduce inputand transaction costs. TheCA and the VA bothactually encouraged themfor resource pooling. TheCA helped them preparetheir field for SRI paddyand seven layers mulchingtechniques and createwater harvesting structurein the field, for which thesewomen worked underMGNREGA. Moreover, theCA trained them onplanned water use underSRI, exposed them to the

educators that are captured in another casestudy.

The cultivation of SRI paddy and vegetablesthrough pooling of resources has been greatlybeneficial to Padmamma and nine otherwomen. They could use the production for self-consumption and actually sell a good part ofthe crop. Moreover, they could sell thevegetables to the nearby schools, for middaymeals. As a result they could pay back the leaserent in full, renewed their lease for the 2nd and3rd year and continued successfully. On anaverage, their net revenue is about Rs.30000-35000 per year each from this operation.

This case study highlights severalfindings.Padmammas have clearly graduallytransformed from being wage labourers toowner-producer of food through landleasing, pooling of resources, andenhancement of knowledge of agri-techniques. Their social capital improved,individual income increased, theirconfidence in themselves took a new leap.At the same time, innovative programmaticlinkages with MGNREGA, mid-day meal,and with the local market were significant

nuances of pest management, but moreimportantly taught them how to pool in theirresources like sharing of labour, costs, watersand aggregation of inputs and produce.

Padmamma and team jointly leased in five acresat the cost of Rs. 9000 per acre per annum,and arranged the paddy fields in a manner sothat they could best use their labour, water,seeds, and other inputs. Additionally each ofthem did develop a 36ft. x 36 ft. multi-tiermulching garden for a variety of vegetables forall three seasons.

Pest management is a key technologyintervention under POP programme. Thesewomen learnt the diagnostic skills to observe,document and understand the behaviour andlife cycles of pests and the role of naturalpredators. Subsequently, they were also trainedto use physical methods of pest managementcomplemented by botanical formulations andbio-pesticides. They also learnt about the waysto maintain soil health such as mulching, use ofgreen manure and vermin-composting; andappropriate cropping systems such as inter-cropping, multi-cropping and crop rotations.Almost all of these trainings were done by peer

Paddy fields under CMSA farming in Vishakhapatnam district


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contributory factors to their successes.MGNREGA wages provided income as theyprepared their fields, the midday mealprogram in the village provided anaccessible outlet for their vegetables, andthe local market could absorb theirproduce. Furthermore, the three tierstructure of Mandal Samakhya, VillageOrganisations and SHGs provided theenabling environment to make it possible.The institutional synchronization provedvital for such successes. While theexperience of the women is very positive,there is also an inherent risk: the leasing inof the land is oral and informal such thatthe women’s income security is not on asolid ground.

(Source: Group discussion with Padmamma, Veeramani, Sujatha,Ratnamma, and Bhagamma in Raipalle village, ZahirabadMandal, Medak district, Andhra Pradesh)

3.2 Case Study II

Decentralized Agricultural Extension:Women as providers of extensionservices

Meet Santosha, the NPM retailer, a CRP and apioneer of sustainable agriculture inNandigrama Village, of Ramayampet Mandal ofMedak District in Andhra Pradesh. A widow, inher mid- thirties and illiterate, she is one of themost sought after persons as a technologyprovider, a demonstration farmer and an NPMexpert plus retailer. Santosha’s journey is noordinary tale. She belongs to the Dalitcommunity and like other Scheduled Castehouseholds in the region, she only had a smallpiece of low quality land (0.25 Acre) that wasquite inadequate for meeting her householdrequirements throughout the year.

Her journey to self-reliance started when shebecame a SHG member and startedparticipating in the thrift and credit programmeon a regular basis. It helped her family’s cash

flow, but more importantly it provided her theopportunity to move up. Her active involvementin all SHG activities took her to become amember of the VO and eventually, herleadership qualities helped her to become anexecutive member of the Mandal Samakhya andfinally the Zilla Samakhya. She became amember of the Livelihoods Sub-Committee ofthe Zilla Samakhya and was entrusted tooversee implementation of CMSA programmein the district.

Her strength lies in her leadership qualities, andalso her ability to absorb the technologicalaspects of CMSA interventions and demonstratethem to others. She was chosen as a CRP,because she quickly learnt and demonstratedthe technological responsibilities of a CRP.

A CRP is defined as a best practitionerof CMSA techniques. In the language ofagricultural extension, a CRP is ademonstration farmer, who is supposedto provide demonstrable evidence thatCMSA techniques are poor friendly,practical, cost saving, output maximizingand more sustainable techniques bybeing the change herself. They aretrained on non-pesticide management,soil fertility management, 36ft. x 36ft.models, poly crop models, rain waterharvesting, SRI cultivation, farmers’ fieldschools and integrated farming systems.They are seen as role models by thecommunity, and they are expected toprovide hands on experience to thewilling farmers. A CRP has to establish36ft. x 36ft. models, crop models,compost pits, cattle shed lining, bundplantation, SRI in paddy, deep furrows,registration fee collection.2

Santosha received trainings in NPM techniques;ways to utilize locally available resources likeseed, natural fertilizers, sunlight, water and

2 Each farm family including farmers outside the SHG fold pay Rs. 30 per year as registration fee.


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land; crop management— ways to maximizeoutput from a unit of land through inter-cropping, multi-cropping and crop rotations;conservation of soil moisture, renewable naturalresources and flora and fauna bio-diversity.Santosha showed exemplary accomplishmentsin all these. In fact she could do all that wasexpected from a demonstration farmer using herown and a leased in land, and that was indeedthe key to her success. As a CRP she conductswhat is called Farmers’ Field School (FFSs)which means she has to take on site class forCMSA practitioners in the morning from 7 amto 10 am to show how these techniques work onthe ground. The VAs would bring the CMSApractitioners to the CRPs who have to conductthese classes on a regular basis. Thesepractitioners are women and men selected bythe SHGs and VOs who intends to practiceCMSA techniques on their own land to producepaddy, red gram, leafy vegetables, fruit plants,orchards, and 36ft. x 36ft. multi-tier mulchingmodels for vegetables-fruits. These farmers aregrouped into what is called Sashya MitraSangha (SMS). The CRPs train these SMSmembers at the FFSs by rotation on a regularbasis under a VO and Mandal level CMSAplan. Each CRP has to adopt three villages andconduct such training and hands ondemonstration. For her CRP work, Santoshareceives Rs. 375/- per day including herhonorarium, DA and travel expenses. Her worktook her to other districts as well.

The CRPs in conjunction with VAs and CAs areclearly the programme vehicles of CMSA.Santosha is not alone nor an exception.Hundreds of such women CRPs are nowcarrying the CMSA programme in 21 districts.There are CRPs at the state level, district leveland some are working at the Mandal level.Almost all these CRPs are women.

Santosh’s story has not finished yet. As a CRP,she also produces botanical extracts,pheromone traps3, liquid manures, neem cakes,composts and other products for demonstrationand actual use. Her entrepreneurial abilitiesfound expression when she decided to start ashop to sell these products. These shopsbecame a part of the CMSA programme, forwhich the state leadership decided to provideseed grant of Rs. 10,000/- to start the shop.Apart from these products, Santosha’s shop alsosells equipment like de-weeders and wetgrinders.

Santosha is a live example of the womencentric approach of CMSA. It’s clear thatCMSA followed the well-established dictumof agricultural extension: peer learning,demonstration, practice the change and onthe job learning. The critical differenceCMSA brought in was that it entrusted itsinstitutional faith on the capability ofwomen. On another plane, the CMSA alsovery correctly relied on a decentralizedextension strategy to have CRPs at all levelsthat have come up from the SHGsthemselves and are not imported from eliteeducational institutions. A third learning isthat the CRPs are embedded with ZillaSamakhya and Mandal Samakhya that arethe backbone of CMSA interventions. Theyare embedded in two ways: they are partand parcel of the Samakhyas, being aprimary member and leader of theinstitution in their own might, and also theyare managed by the Samakhyas andremain accountable to the sameinstitutions, to which they belong.

Amidst all these commendableachievements, a caveat may be in order.While Santosha has her own land that shegot under survivorship from her husband,not all CRPs may be as lucky as she is.

3 A pheromone trap is a type of insect trap that uses pheromones (hormones) to lure insects. Sex pheromones are the most common typesused. A pheromone impregnated lure is encased in a conventional trap such as funnel trap.


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While the CRPs’ primary asset isintellectual, it’s important to complement itby hard assets like land ownership andcontrol of the income she earns. In theabsence of that, the women CRPs maybecome only improved tools in a granddesign and not being a designer herself.

(Source: Interview with Santosha, NPM shop owner inNandigrama Village,Ramayampet Mandal, Medak District,Andhra Pradesh)

3.3 Case Study III

Women as Technology Provider

CMSA aims to alter agriculture practices byintroducing new cost effective, poor-friendly,local material based and environmentally soundtechniques that are scientific, practical, andprocess driven. In brief, it’s an alternativetechnology adoption programme in scaleamong the poorer section of the rural womenand their families to increase income andimprove household food security, and in theprocess empower the women with a newknowledge system that has a promising future.The question is how do these technologymanagement and adoption take place, whatare the communication strategies and how itcan be sustained.To answer these questions thiscase study documents the process and strategiesof CMSA.

Jyothi, of Marikel Village in the TimmajipetMandal of Mahboobnagar District, is a CMSAfarmer cum Cluster Activist. She is part of adistrict and state wide network of CRPs and CAsthat transfer technology from the state throughthe district down to the mandal and villages. It’sa cascading approach in which the state levelCRPs train the district level ones and they in turntrain the CAs working at the mandal and villagelevels. These CRPs and CAs are professionalsfrom the community who rose to leadership atdifferent levels by experience and commitment.Jyothi is one of them, who having studied up toclass X and belonging to a high caste family, is

articulate and has already risen to leadership atthe VO level and became its treasurer. In 2011,she resigned from the honorary treasurer postand became employed as a Cluster Activist(CA). As a CA, she receives an honorarium ofRs. 6000/- per month from the SHG federationat the Mandal level to whom she isaccountable. The SHG federation receives themoney from IKP programme fund. As a CA shehas a mobilizational cum technology bearerrole in the villages. Jyothi is trained not only inCMSA techniques of agri-horticulture; but she isalso trained in mobile based MIS applicationsand digital video photography.

The CMSA programme has tried a uniqueexperiment. It combined three roles in oneperson like Jyothi. She is a technology bearer, aMIS data collector through mobile, and also atechnology communicator through video films.At the same time the mobilizational role remainsand is intrinsically built in with these three roles.The data Jyothi sends through mobilemessaging is a set of information that comefrom 40,000 such villages on nearly 1 millionCMSA farmers to a central server in IKP’s stateoffice, and gets processed and thencommunicated downward to Zilla Samakhya aswell as published in the public domain. Thus,data of each of such interventions like the 36ft.x 36ft. model, operational FFSs, SRI paddycoverage, operational NPM shops, compostpits, and others are sent by Jyothi and her peersand are gathered and analyzed by competentpersons at the state level.

Technology transfer needs physicaldemonstrations and virtual methods cansupplement that effort quite effectively. Not allthe SMS members can attend FFS in themorning on a regular basis, nor can theyremember all the technical aspects so easily.Attending morning FFSs is almost impossible forwomen farmers due to their household work.Digital communication helps clarify information,and reinforce memory. Jyothi received training


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and hand holding by Digital Green, atechnology communication group, and as aresult she can shoot videos of CMSA cropmanagement techniques, gets them edited byexpert editors and thereafter shows these videosto the farmers using a battery operated Pico-projector.

Jyothi is in charge of five villages and hastrained dozens of CMSA practitioners, gatheredand sent hundreds of data over mobile on aregular basis, and has also shot and shown anumber of video films on CMSA techniques tosensitize, orient, and to provide skills to thosefarmers. Jyothi is representative of a state widemechanism which includes technologyadoption, programme management andtechnology communication.Did Jyothi’s life andvoice change for the better as of result of allthese engagement? She believes that herleadership, management and intellectualcapacity are recognized by all stakeholderswithout fail. This, coupled with her reasonableearnings, has surely changed her position in thefamily. Her mobility is not questioned, heropinions are heard, her suggestions are oftenaccepted. She cites one example: she wasinstrumental in admitting her two schoolage daughters to a boarding school. Herdecisions in the field are more independentthough, she admits. She enjoys the respectshe commands in the field. At home, hersay on saving and expenditure decisionsare taken seriously by her family members.

There are a number of learnings from Jyothi’scase study. First, the combination of technologydemonstration, technology communication andMIS data collection roles seems to have beensuccessfully weaved into one person. Thisapproach of multi skill development of oneperson is an interesting strategy in terms oflong term sustainability, as one of these manyskills, she may use for many more years after theprogramme ends, while some other skill maynot find takers after the end of this programme.

In case of Jyothi for example, her mobile basedskill or CMSA technology transfer skills may beof use for many years, while video shooting andprojection skills may not or vice-versa. The casestudy also hints at a broader question: whilesuch facilitational and communication rolessurely cause vast enhancement in womenmobility, and that itself is a desirable outcome,as well as women’s earning enhances her voicein the family, are these changestransformational in her life? The question is notto doubt the enormous feat achieved by Jyothiand her peers, but to pose it for furthersystematic research.

The second learning is about the decentralizedmanagement model which is built on theenormous trust CMSA programme has reposedon a local agent instead of relying on importedexpertise based on highly specialized expertknowledge. The IKP believed in local knowledgecreation, knowledge transfer by local meanswith use of carriers that are local and rooted tothe institutional fabric of the communitymanaged institutions. It also successfullyincorporated modern methods ofcommunication and analysis and broke themyth that sophisticated technology can only beadopted by elites of the society and the rest willalways depends on crude, traditional localempirically generated technologies, that areoften perceived more like an art than a science.

Finally, Jyothi’s case also establishes thatprogramme deliverers can also be verysuccessful communicators at scale, and thatdelivery and communication indeed go hand inhand and need not be seen as a separate lineof activity requiring exclusive personnel. In factcombining the MIS function with delivery andcommunication function is a triple feat. It wouldbe good to do a more careful analysis about itsquality and effectiveness when delivered atscale.

(Source: Interview with Jyothi, CA, Marikel Village, TimmajipetMandal, Mahboob Nagar, Andhra Pradesh)


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3.4 Case Study IV

Women as Leaders of Change: ManyHats to Wear

If the Zilla Samakhya, Mandal Samakhya,Village Organizations and SHGs are theinstitutional backbone of all IKP programmesincluding CMSA, it is obvious that theleadership of these women’s institutions at alllevels require multiple skills, knowledge andexperience to conduct programmemanagement, institutional networking withexternal stakeholders like GovernmentDepartments- Banks- Panchayats, technologydissemination, monitoring, communication andothers. Venkateshwaramma’s story reflects onhow the different roles are played by the womenleaders who are making it happen.

Venkateshwaramma of Marikel Village inTimmajipet Mandal, Mahboobnagar District inAndhra Pradesh has many hats to wear. She is aleader of an SHG, leader of the VO, member ofa Mandal Samakhya’s subcommittee and aNPM sub-committee member of the ZillaSamakhyas. She is also an entrepreneur,running a NPM products outlet, involved in

management of herfamily’s grocery shop, andan auto rickshaw business.The latter are part of anongoing familial business.

Venkateshwaramma isfrom an upper caste Reddyfamily and educated up toclass X, therefore, it wasnot difficult for her to climbup in the institutionalhierarchy of the SHG-VO-MS-ZS. She was part ofthe process of formation ofthe VO, and thereafter inits registration as aCooperative. All such VOsunder IKP have been

NPM shop under CMSA selling organic vegetables grown by SHG members

registered as a cooperative under MutuallyAided Cooperative Societies Act, 1995, wherethe cooperative can run without anyadministrative control of the government. TheMandal Samakhyas which are comprised of anumber of VOs are also registered under thesame Act, as a federation of cooperatives. Theadvantages are enormous— the cooperativescan access bank credit and provide loan to itsmembers, they can run as a member drivenbusiness entity, and enter into business contractswith agencies, Panchayats and companies.

As one leader of the VO, Venkateshwarammafacilitated membership of more SHGs, and wasconversant in issuing share certificates, andmaintaining relevant registers that are neededfor a registered cooperative. She was alsoinstrumental in negotiating lines of credit to theVOs from commercial and regional rural banksfor onward lending to the member SHGs. TheVO was involved in the NREGA implementation,and she even worked on behalf of the VO tofacilitate MGNREGA work for the womenmembers of the SHGs. When she became aleader of the Mandal Samakhya, she wastrained on federating the VOs and issuing them


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share certificates, but she learned new skills aswell. She became the training organizer for allVOs and all SHGs, and eventually, monitoringthe performance of the SHGs became one of

her main duties. The other main responsi- bilitywas constant liaising with government depart-ments for securing governmental support toMandal Samakhya’s programmes.

Venkateshwaramma’s role in managing the VOs and Mandal Samakhaya has beenfocused on what may be called programme management functions like training,monitoring, liaising, mobilizing, and conducting negotiations. Eventually, she was alsotrained on handling mobile based reporting, and data gathering, and mobile based textservice for advance information of market prices for vegetables and transmitting those toCMSA farmers.

However, her success is not limited to management leadership. She learnt all the CMSAtechniques and eventually became a successful CMSA farmer. Her husband was initiallyquite resistant to introduce these techniques on their family land and going againstusual practices, but she claims she was forceful and could finally convince him to do it.After two seasons, he realized the power of these techniques in terms of cost savings,improving soil nutrition, production variety, and enhanced market value of these non-pesticide products. The result was that her husband finally turned into a full time farmer,and returned home from Nagpur, Maharastra where he used to work in the constructionindustry. This change came when he saw that the land became extremely productive,and could earn a reasonable return.

IKP-CMSA has found leaders like Venkateshwaramma in many mandals and villages.While IKP staff were instrumental in transferring management skills and experience tothe leaders of Zilla Samakhyas and Mandal Samakhyas, it is their institutional practicethat was critical for its absorption and sustenance. The institution building wing of theIKP was instrumental in creating and establishing these capacities among these ruralwomen who hitherto have never been exposed to such situations and the needsemerging out of those situations. As she moved upward from SHG to VO to MS and toZS, Venkateshwaramma had to learn new skills, undergo new experiences and performnew roles and responsibilities. The idea at work clearly is not to create specialists butcreate broad capacities that can eventually be tweaked to specializations whenevernecessary. Venkateshwaramma may be an exceptional woman that she could absorb allthat she learnt and successfully used those for the institutions to deliver results. It maybe conjectured that not all women would become Venkateshwaramma, but the intentand strategy of IKP and CMSA is quite clear; create and establish a broad range of localcapacity, capacity that will stay and grow within the community and help sustain theinstitutions of the women.

Did Venkateshwaramma’s situation in her family change significantly? There areindications that it did. Specifically, her mobility, her management and intellectualcapacity, and her success to bring her husband back from migration- all indicate thatshe is more respected and loved in the family than before. There is no question that shebrought honour to the family. It’s perhaps difficult to make the case that genderrelations have vastly improved in her family. That would need more systematic inquiry.

(Source: Interview with Venkateshwaramma, ZS NPM subcommittee member Marikel village, Timmajipet Mandal, Mahboob Nagar district,Andhra Pradesh)


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3.5 Case Study V

CMSA Leading the Way to HouseholdFood Security

According to Indian classification of farmers,Lakshmi would belong to the category of smallfarmers. Her family has one acre of crop land inKorada Village in Padmanabham Mandal in theVishakhapatnam District of Andhra Pradesh. Theland is rainfed, where crops like paddy,vegetables, legumes, millets and papaya aregrown in two seasons, depending on theavailability of water. Like many small farmerhouseholds of Andhra Pradesh, most ofLakshmi’s family’s agricultural income is spenttowards purchasing food for consumption andpaying the interest on the loans taken topurchase agricultural inputs like chemicalpesticides and fertilizers. Despite an acre ofland, her family is not income or food secure.By any standard, she is regarded as one of thevery poor, if not the poorest.

Although Lakshmi’s family has land, still she wasincluded in the POP strategy that is meant forlandless labourers. Using CMSA techniques ofbio-fertilizers, bio pesticides, mulching and SRImethods, Lakshmi’s family indeed improvedtheir production and the variety of produce in avery significant way. Her household has begunharvesting mutiple crops every year with the costof cultivation reduced to nearly one fourth ofwhat it was earlier. They could achievebetterand improved yields, and they also got morevariety. The amount of vegetables, legumes andgrains they use to buy from the market has beensignificantly reduced. Due to the improvement intheir economic situation, they have been able totake on an additional 0.5 acre land on leaseand used it partly for SRI paddy cultivation andpartly for doing a 36ft. x 36 ft. seven tier modelto grow vegetables, fruits and tubers. They havealso invested in other livelihood assets such as asetting up a local NPM shop to sell bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers.

Lakshmi speaks more about her multi-tiervegetable garden, that gave them substantialquantity and variety of vegetables, grams, rootsand fruits. Under the 36ft.x36ft. model, cropsare arranged in seven tiers. The first tierincludes plants which require minimal sunlightsuch as root or tuber crops like carrot, beetroot,and ginger. The second tier includes creepersthat cover the soil such as bottle gourd andcucumber, and act as live mulch. The third tierincludes leafy vegetables such as sorrel leaves,spinach, coriander and amaranthus. The fourthtier includes vegetables such as brinjal, tomatoand chillies. The fifth tier includes perennialcrops such as castor and red gram. Sixth tierhas fruit trees such as papaya, drumstick,custard apple and guava. The seventh tier alsohas fruit crops such as mango; these are plantswhich require maximum sunlight. The harvestingof multiple crops round the year is provide foodthroughout the year, promotes nutritionalsecurity and ensures regular income to thefamily in the small plot of land. On a plot of0.25 acre, this seven tier production systemproduces enough for a four member family ofLakshmi. In fact they now have marketablesurplus.

Using SRI method in rice cultivation andapplying bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides,Lakshmi’s fields could produce much more thanbefore. And using rainwater effectively, Lakshmicould grow paddy and cereals in two seasonsinstead of one improving soil nutrition, outputs,and again, creating a marketable surplus.

Lakshmi’s another effort is to create andmanage a seed bank, preserving seeds ofpaddy, vegetables, and fruits in a group. Initiallythis was started as a CMSA farmers led effort,with the seeds obtained from the vegetables,tubers, fruits and creepers of the 36 ft. x 36 ft.model. Soon it grew into a fairly largeprogramme within CMSA, in which, seedvarieties developed by research institutes likeICRISAT were added to the seed kitty of the


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SHG. The variety in the seed bank grew fromfive to 18 different types of seeds. The memberscould borrow from the seed bank, with thecondition that she will have to return to the bankthe same amount plus an additional 50%, sothat the kitty grows for others. Moreover, seedexchanges started happening across the VOsand Mandal Samakhyas, thus spreading acrossthe district and beyond.

Running a seed bank requires technicalknowledge of seed preservation, as wellknowledge of accounting. Lakshmi took on theresponsibility, learnt the techniques from theCAs, arranged the space at her home, and ismanaging the seed bank on her group’s behalf.

What does all this mean for her life? She claimsthat her family’s net income is now over50,000/- in a year, a significant jump frombefore. Her family’s food basket is now vastlyimproved, thanks to the variety of vegetables,fruits and tuber that get included in their dailydiet. She also claims that their debt burden isnow less than before. This success, she says, hasmade her more confident and has facilitated herinclusion in household decision making. Eventhough her decisions still need consent from themale members of her household, she is findingpockets of autonomy. While she had to workhard initially to convince her family to accepther CMSA experiments, she is now a betternegotiator and exercises her choice on whatcrops and vegetables to grow on their land,

how much to sell and purchase, and also onspending decisions. She travels to the market inVijaynagaram town to sell the produce andpurchases materials to prepare naturalpesticides.

Clearly, Lakshmi is the change agent forher family towards achieving householdfood security through adoption ofsustainable agriculture techniques.Lakshmi’s case establishes that rain fedareas and the families dependent on itcan be made food secure if appropriatetechnologies are used. In Lakshmi’swords, as long as they only knew ofusual ways of cultivation they werecertainly poorer, CMSA techniques havehelped her family break the cycle ofpoverty.

Did it help her break the burden ofpatriarchy? Did her gender situationimproved? As we can see herconfidence level enhanced greatly, hermanagement capacity has improved,her value in the family has increased.We might say that she has been able tostir a change in her situation in thefamily. We have to wait and see if that istransformational.

(Source: Interview with Lakshmi, a woman farmerpractising CMSA methods in Korada village,Padmanabham Mandal, Vishakhapatnam, AndhraPradesh)


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4.1 Case Study I

Collective Leasing: Transformation ofWomen as Cultivators

If you ask any NHG member “what would youlike to do to improve your economic situation?”almost 98% will most likely say, “We want to docollective farming on leased land,” says a

4.0 Case Studies fromKerala

Kudumbashree official atThiruvananthapuram.Compared to about 900women groups that areengaged in micro enterprise,2.15 lakh women’s groupsare doing collective farmingon leased-in land. While thisdepicts the enormouspopularity of collective leasingamong women members, thestory below will indicate whythis is so.

Ramani Sreenivasan, SheebaBalakrishnan, Sreeja Daranand Bindu Sathyan aremembers of GramashreeJoint Liability Group in

Mullasherry Gram Panchayat of Thrissur District.The group has been formed out of a NHG totake up collective leasing way back in 2006when KDS took up farming as an economic

Members of Gramashree JLG

activity. KDS named these groups as “activitygroups” (AG) within an NHG. If an activitygroup took up farming, they were eligible for afew back-end subsidies. Ramani et al. were alllandless agricultural labourers that worked onlocal land owner’s land for a living. Togetherthey worked for three landowners, whose landswere all in one adjacent single stretch of 13.5

acre. When the landowners stopped theircultivation around 1998, for being unable topay high wages (around Rs. 125/- a day in1998), the land lay fallow for years.


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Ramani and others recall that they came toknow of collective leasing programme from theGram Panchayat. They decided to give it a tryand started farming as part of Kudumbashreefrom 1998. These women knew each other andworked for the same landowners before, so theythought they could take the land on lease fromthe landowners, and revive cultivation of rainfed paddy for four months, which they knewhow to grow. With the help of the Panchayat’sward member, and one CDS member, they wereable to successfully negotiate a lease agreementwith the landowners. The landowners agreed onthe conditions: for 5.5 acres, the lease rent wasRs. 12,000/- per acre per annum and for therest 8 acres, the lease rent was 50% of theharvest.

It was a challenge to secure the lease rent incash because that was payable in advance,whereas the other rent was payable only after theharvest. The women took personal loans from therelatives and also some NHG loans to make thestart. The CDS also helped them by discussingwith the Gram Panchayat and developed asupplementary scheme under MGNREGA forland preparation and reclamation. MGNREGAwage helped them with some cash which theyadded to their NHG savings, NHG’s loan andpersonal loans to pay the rent.

Even though these women knew paddyproduction techniques, they were encouraged toundergo training by the CDS. When asked why,the women answered, the CDS were makingsure that they knew scientific crop managementso that they do not lose crop by some pestattack, and become indebted.

Collective leasing has two intrinsic risks. A) cropfailure or less production can make a personperpetually indebted, and B) if the crops do wellfor a couple of years, the soil quality vastlyimproves, and that can be attractive for thelandowner to change his mind and take backthe land. Ramani has been lucky in both theserespects. Their production was reliable yearafter year thanks to adequate rainfall, and more

importantly, their lease did not stop, and it wasrenewed every year from all the landowners.

Although the land was rain fed, the womenobtained about 1200 kg per acre yield fromtheir field. These women were able to generatea total production of 15500-16500 Kg fromtheir field. At this level of production, theirrevenue varies from Rs. 225,000/- to 275,000/- as a group, and their net income is about Rs.40,000/- per member.

Their journey took a new turn when the groupwas registered with NABARD as a Joint LiabilityGroup (JLG) in 2009. The category change wasdone as per official policy of KDS so that thesegroups can access agricultural credit at aminimal rate of interest from commercial andcooperative banks. Another milestone in theirjourney was in 2011 when the CDS and theGram Panchayat under an overall KDS missiondictate, connected them to Supply Co, a publicsector marketing cooperative that procurespaddy on behalf of the government at theminimum support price of Rs. 17/- kg. while theprevalent market price was then Rs. 13/- per kg.

Ramanis’ story is simple. The institutionalbackbone of CDS and ADS created under KDSprovided the enabling support to these womento start a collective endeavour, using the localland lying fallow and the landowners agreeingto a market friendly arrangement of rent.Instead of trying new items, the women did whatthey already knew — paddy, and thanks to theinitial support of NREGA and NHG loan, theytook a risk in which they succeeded. Theyshowed that using mostly family labour, thesefallow lands can be successfully brought back tocultivation, and in the process help increasefamily income significantly. The structurallinkage with Supply Co helped sustain theireffort from vagaries of the market by purchaseand sale under a protective price mechanism.


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There are important lessons from thisexperience. Their effort is successfulbecause the women and their familiesenjoy the trust of the landowners, sothat they can continue leasing in yearafter year. Thousands of such oral orplain paper agreements continue todominate the leasing environment, asleasing is completely banned in Kerala.Such arrangements favour thelandowners; the lessees gain as long asthe owner allows them to gain. On theother hand, it’s clear that even afterpaying lease rent at the market rate, thewomen have made substantive gainswith a simple cultivation like paddy. Thisis because they do not usually hirelabour to do the production, and evenwhen they do, that is for a very limitedperiod. The engagement of CDS andADS is limited to providing the enablingenvironment, and some monitoring sothat they can provide the back endsubsidy to the group, but the technologytransfer component is quite minimal.

What are the changes in the lives ofthese women? According to them, theirown kitty has increased, they have beenable to repay all the personal loans, asa group, their savings are nowsubstantial to the extent that they havevery recently bought a 0.5 acre land asa group. The women have also investedin jewelleries and household items. Inbrief, the women’s own assets are onthe rise, increasing slowly but steadily.

The largest chunk of collective leasinginterventions by KDS mission is in suchrelatively simple cultivation of paddyand banana with some inter-cropping ofvegetables, tubers and fruits. Thesuccess is in its simplicity, backed up bythe strong institutional backbone ofwomen’s collective and Panchayati Raj.

(Source: Interviews with Gramashree JLG members inMullasherryPanchayat, Thrissur District)

4.2 Case Study II

Institutional Convergence: A Key toSuccess for Women’s Collective Leasing

Kerala’s Gram Panchayats are notable for theirauthority, financial and administrative powers.Typically, a Gram Panchayat in Kerala has 25-27 staff, its campus has multiple offices likeKrishi Bhavan—the agricultural extension center,an office of primary education, animalresources and often a branch of a bank. TheCDS’s office is also situated in the GramPanchayat campus. These Gram Panchayatshandle one third of the state’s budget, plus thecentral sector schemes that mandatePanchayat’s role in planning andimplementation. Kerala has even recognized theADS as an implementation agency forMGNREGA.

How do all these connect to KDSprogramming? Does the presence of theseinstitutions help the women in their works toimprove their livelihoods in agriculture undercollective leasing programme of the KDS? Thecase study below provides an answer.

Ancy George, Luzy Joseph, Joymol Antony andGracy Verghese are members of Rose JointLiability Group in Pambadumpara GramPanchayat, Nedumkandam Block, IdukkiDistrict. Unlike the Ramanis, these women couldonly manage to lease in a two acre plot fromone land owner. The lease is renewable everythree years at a rent of Rs. 10,000/-per acreper annum. This land too was lying fallow, asthe landowner moved to the nearby town ingovernment service and had no interest incultivation.

Although the Rose JLG could get only 2 acre,they were fortunate in a different way. The CDSand Gram Panchayat together helped thisgroup in a number of ways. The groupapproached the ADS to provide them withMGNREGA support to make the land suitable


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for cultivation. The ADS in turn made asupplementary scheme of MGNREGA and gotthis done. The women group approached theKrishi Bhavan for supporting them with qualityseeds. They were in turn told that the Bhavanwould do a soil test of their land, and thenadvise them of the best combination of crops.Eventually the soil test was done, and based onthe results they were advised to do seasonalvegetables in a planned manner and changecrops every season. The list of what they couldproduce was big: bitter gourd, brinjal, ginger,tapioca, carrot, lobhia bean, tubers andbanana. This crop combination required spaceplanning so the women went back to the KrishiBhavan and sought their advice. Thanks to thepresence of CDS in the Gram Panchayatcampus and their follow up, the Krishi Bhavanquickly responded and worked with the womento plan the two acre space for every crop andevery season.

As these developments were taking place at thelocal level, KDS Mission struck a deal with theKrishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), the district levelagricultural resource center of the agriculturedepartment, to provide technical know-how andtraining on organic methods of pest andfertilizer management. The district KDS Missionprovided a list of women JLGs to the KVK thatthey would train on organic crop management.Rose JLG was on that list. As a result, the RoseJLG received training on making biologicalpesticides and fertilizers by using local materialssuch as a mixture of tobacco juice and washingsoap, and fish and powdered jaggery. The CDSin this Gram Panchayat also successfullycontacted and secured a collateral freeagricultural loan for the Rose JLG from the bankbranch situated at the Gram Panchayat campus.Each member received Rs. 50,000/- as anunsecured term loan from the bank, payable inthree years.

Rose JLG utilized these supports to their fullest.As a result, the Rose JLG cultivated high valuevegetables using organic methods, withinstitutional finance at a reasonable rate of 7%per annum, with enabling technical guidancefrom the Krishi Bhavan. The Rose JLG’seconomic returns became significant so thatthey have returned their individual bank loans intime, renewed their lease for five consecutiveyears, took a return loan from the bank foranother three years, and are paying theinstallments on regular basis. With localmaterials to make pesticides and fertilizers theyreduced the cultivation costs. The croprotations over the three seasons improved soilnutrition and thereby productivity. The planneduse of space helped in obtaining maximumyield, and Krishi Bhavan’s guidance andtechnical monitoring ensured minimum croploss.

The crops generated in the field are divided intotwo parts: one part is for their domesticconsumption that is distributed among themembers; the second part is for sale in the localmarket. The sale proceeds are used forrepayment of bank and other loans, input costsof next round of production and group savings.Consensus is the principle that guides thisdivision rather than any scientific formulae. Thewomen feel that roughly 60% is for theirdomestic consumption, and 40% goes to themarket. It is quite likely, that financialconsiderations of repayment of bank loan, inputcosts for next seasons, savings for future, andongoing market price of the products alsoinfluence their formulae.

The continuity of the present lease for the last sixyears is an indication that their agriculturaloperation has stabilized.Their performance isacknowledged by the Gram Panchayat andKrishi Bhavan, with the latter remaining anenthusiastic supporter of their endeavour.


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This case study is an example of howCDS’s strong linkage with the GramPanchayat has been instrumental inproviding multiple support systems tonurture and benefit a new endeavour.More important is that except for thelinkage with KVK, all other convergencelinkages are achieved at the local level,without much programmatic interventionof the KDS Mission from the top. Thiswas possible due to the presence ofstrong and inclusive Gram Panchayats inKerala. One tends to believe that this ismore sustainable than the more centrallyplanned models.

What happened to the women of theRose JLG in particular? What changed intheir life? In answering these twoquestions, the women asserted thefollowing: their dependence on theirrespective husbands for any financialsupport has reduced significantly; in facttheir income now contributes tohousehold expenditures. Theirmembership of the NHG and later theRose JLGhas given them a strongcollective identity and added weight totheir status within the household. Theybuy jewelry, household furniture, spendmore lavishly on their children’smarriage from their savings, and alsouse their savings for the highereducation of their children. It is clearfrom the conversation that their thinkingand planning horizon is now muchbroader than earlier. They are nowseriously thinking of buying a piece o ofland in the name of the JLG.

A long accepted argument in thewomen’s empowerment literature is thatwomen’s economic empowerment startswith earning and saving from thatincome. In that sense, these womenhave done well. It remains to be seenhow far these changes transform thegender relations in the family.

(Source: Interview with JLG Rose in Pambadumpara GramPanchayat, Nedumkandam Block, Idukki District, Kerala)

4.3 Case Study III

Multiple Marketing Channels for WomenCultivators

When agricultural production is mostly fordomestic consumption, it’s defined assubsistence agriculture. Commercial agriculturepre-supposes that agricultural production is pre-dominantly for the market, although domesticconsumption may still be a part of it. One of themost critical question, commercial agriculturehas to address is ensuring market andremunerative prices. The case study belowcaptures what KDS did to address the issue.

Both Dhanasthree JLG comprising of fivemembers of Onakurvillage of PambakudaGram Panchayat in Ernakulum district, andSneha JLG comprising eight members fromNadathara village of Nadathara GramPanchayat of Thrissur district are examples ofsuccessful market players. Both are vegetableproducers. Dhanasthree JLG operates on 80decimals of leased in land, while Sneha JLGoperates on 15acres of leased land. Both JLGshave been in operation for about five years.While Dhanasthree grows a variety of seasonalvegetables and tubers, like bitter gourd,cassava, snake gourd, beans, tapioca andothers, Sneha JLG cultivates bitter gourd on acommercial scale on a larger piece of land.

The beginning of both groups was almost thesame. They were aware of the opportunity ofcollective leasing and they approached theirADS and CDS to help them negotiate land forleasing in. Both groups eventually negotiatedwith the landowners to agree on a lease for twoyears each, at the fixed rent of Rs. 10,000/- peracre. The lease agreements were all oral. Thenext step was to access MGNREGA funds toprepare the fallow land for cultivation. At thewage rate of Rs. 172/- per day, both the JLGscould use their family job cards to work for thepreparation of the soil. This was not only awomen’s job. The men in the family alsoparticipated in preparing the land.


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JLGs choose what they will produce underKDS’s mandate, with a few restrictions. Therestrictions are: a) no cash crops like rubber,tea, or coffee, and b) no chemical fertilizer orpesticides. The commercial production of foodcrops is allowed. Dhanashree opted forseasonal vegetables while Sneha opted forlarge scale production of bitter gourd. Thepredominant crop pattern in the area oftendetermines the choice of the crop. The areaunder Nadathara Gram Panchayat is wellknown for large scale production of bitter gourdand export to other districts. That most likely hasinfluenced their decision. The area inPambadumpara Gram Panchayat is not underany specialized commercial crop. Moreover,relatively smaller plots are always known to bemore useful for diversified crops. It appears thatin both cases, the groups received appropriateadvice and made a rational choice.

Although the scale of operation between the twogroups is vastly different, both operate onsimilar marketing linkages. One part of thatlinkage is with the local market, often a weeklyhaat or a standing daily market where, theproducers go and sell their products eitherdirectly to the consumer or to the trader. Thetraders often come to villages and buy the

products from the production sites.Even though selling at productionsites usually earns a lower price thanwhat they would have received atthe market, it is beneficial for thewomen, because it saves the hassleto transport it to the market.

The second linkage is with the largermarket at the district level andbeyond. Linkage with such a marketfetches a better price, but requiresconforming to its logic. One suchlinkage facilitated by KDS Mission iswith Vegetable Fruit PromotionCouncil of Kerala (VFPCK), a stategovernment enterprise. VFPCK have

Members of Sneha JLG, Thrissur district

collection centers, where their staff comes onfixed days in a week, and collect the producedirectly from the producers. The district levelKDS Mission negotiated a routine with theVFPCK to go and collect produce at differentcollection centers and at the same time spreadthe information through the CDS-ADS channelsto the JLGs to avail this marketing facility. TheJLG has to take their products to the collectionpoint, where they are weighed and packed bythe collectors and the producers are paid incheque. The prices are pre-determined anddeclared. There is no intermediary involved inthis transaction. The JLGs are required to bemembers of farmers’ federation to avail thismarketing facility. The farmer’s federation servesas annotional “intermediary” and they receive a“trader’s discount” of Rs. 2/kg. Often thefederation uses that money to provide cashloans to the members. The JLGs could avail thatloan, too. The KDS Mission also facilitated themembership of the JLGs in the farmers’federation.

There is a third marketing avenue that worksprimarily for big producers like Sneha JLG.Inter-district vegetable trade is managed by adifferent set of players who network with localprivate collectors to collect the produce


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primarily from productionsites and then trade it ona larger scale. The localcollectors often have apick up van and cashmoney to pick up from aproduction site and settlethe payment in cash.Sometimes the producerslike Sneha may have theirown pick up van whichthey use to transfer thegoods to the nearestlarge trader. Sincevegetable storagerequires temperaturecontrol, the element ofsophistication in this tradeis quite high. As a largeproducer, Sneha JLG had

register to record and track this computation.The labour rate for individual labourcontribution is decided by the JLGs byconsensus.

It appears that the decisive factor in thecontinuity and success of collective leasefarming under KDS is continuity of the leasearrangement, and equally importantly, onlearning the rules of the market. The priceinformation for different products, differentmarketing outlets, and timeliness of deliveringthe produce to the market, on spot computationof sale value, price negotiation with thepurchaser- all of these are lessons that are bestlearnt on the job. The JLGs learnt it that way.After a year of their immersion in the trade, themembers were once taught of the arithmetic ofproduct costing and pricing; based on theirpractical experience, they had already gainedan intuitive sense of the rules and it helped thema lot. In addition, the women had to do it all bythemselves and it is understandable that theyprobably have been supported in making thesedecisions and choices by their family members.

to look for such outlets. Since the area is knownfor large scale production of bitter gourd,finding such collector-traders was not difficult.Initially, the collector took the produce at theproduction site and paid Sneha JLG in cash.Later, the women realized that if they canarrange a pick up van and reach the mandithey would earn more even after accounting forthe cost of transport and labour. So, in theirfourth year, the Sneha JLG bought a pick upvan. With the pickup van, they are nowdelivering their produce to adjacent districts,too.

How much can a group and a member earn isdetermined by the land size.While DhanshreeJLG’s earning is about Rs. 35000/- per memberin a year, Sneha group is earning Rs. 200,000per member. The calculation of member’searning depends on three factors: individualmember’s contribution to the lease rent,individual money contribution to meet the inputcosts and post-harvest expenses, and individuallabour of each member on the field. Thiscalculation algorithm operates across the JLGsof KDS. Each JLG is taught to maintain a

Accounts register of JLG


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KDS mission’s success in this case andmany other cases is their ability to makeconvergence happen with a number ofstate and non-state actors to leverageinstitutional linkages and resources forthe JLGs. However, its efforts are quitestrategic, reactive and evolving, andleave a lot to be decided on the basis oflocal dynamics and evolving demandsfrom the ground. For example, theVFPCK connection for the JLGs is not topick up all the produce, but to instill asense of competition in the local marketso that the JLGs can benefit from betterpricing. At the same time, the SnehaJLG was enthused and they went on toengage with the larger inter districttrade and learn to navigate through thatmechanism through practicalexperience. In that sense, KDS tried tostrike a good balance between stateand market interventions to facilitateimprovements in livelihoods.

The women of these two JLGs do notknow each other. However, their refrainwas similar. Both have said that theyhave internalized the business principlesmostly through immersion into practicalexperience, and now feel moreconfident about the risks and theirmitigations. Both have their businessexpansion plans and are waiting fornew opportunities that include thepurchase of land, leasing in more land,and diversifying into more remunerativecrops. On the personal front thesewomen share the usual story: they haveenhanced mobility, gained more respectin family, increased personal savings,bought more jewellery, and modernkitchen instruments. Whether the familyis now more “gender just” is a questionthat probably needs more systematicinquiry.

4.4 Case Study IV

Women Master Trainers: Peer Educatorsfor programme scale up

With more than two lakh rural women involvedin collective leasing or Sangha Krishi as it’scalled in Kerala, there is a need for a largenumber of crop management trainers that canwork at the ground level to work with the JLGson soil preparation, crop choices, planting andtransplanting techniques, pest management,water and fertilizer management, weedmanagement and similar issues. The need forsuch trainers is in thousands. While these topicsare very much part of the curriculum ofagricultural colleges, the students and alumni ofthese colleges are not expected to do the workneeded here. The alternative is to build capacityfrom below, by gradually creating a large cadreof grassroot level trainers from these groups, sothat the trainers remain accessible, understandwomen’s specific concerns, and the capacitiesare retained in the community.

Like any other large scale implementation,selecting the right candidate for the job isknown as, ‘half the battle won.’ The KDSMission developed an innovative approach. Itinstituted a “Best Women Farmer” award ineach Gram Panchayat every year. A best farmeris a combination of leadership andtechnological expertise. The person is expectedto show leadership abilities by having moved upfrom the NHGs, and has also managed a JLGfarm successfully with multiple crops year afteryear. In addition, she has to have time to devoteto training activities and learn the science ofthese topics from experts. The final key tobecoming a master trainer is that the personmust have a good plot of land which can beused for demonstration.

The district KDS Missions sensitized the CDSand ADS leadership to discover such potentialmaster trainers in consultation with the GramPanchayats. The CDSs formed a team for this


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important task. They asked theADS to look at JLGs that didwell in cultivation, productionand diversity, and amongthose leaders that have movedup, preferably to the CDSleadership as well. In fact,finding a person who hadrisen to CDS leadership wasnot difficult. After all, all CDSleaders are members of aNHG, and typically most CDSleaders have worked as ADSleaders in the past. Finding aCDS leader who had beeninvolved in training, had beena part of JLG and led it, andhad increased their cultivationportfolio to a level that can be

a number of JLGs, and worked with the bank toprovide loans to some of those JLGs.

Another such master trainer is Eliyamma. Amember of the Veena JLG from the PambakudaGram Panchayat in Onakur village of ErnakulumDistrict, she has been awarded the best farmer byher Gram Panchayat, and has been selected as amaster farmer. She has been the leader of VeenaJLG which was formed in 2008 and has fivemembers. The JLG has been doing collectiveleasing on nine acres of leased in land whichthey received from two landowners. Thanks toher foresight, Veena JLG has used the land veryjudiciously to produce vegetables, fruits such asbanana, and various tubers; all of which areunder a crop rotation plan for all three seasons.She is also a member of a micro-enterprisegroup—another sub-programme within KDS, thatproduces ghee, curd, and rice powder. Her multi-dimensional abilities made her a favorite choicefor a master trainer. Needless to mention,Eliyamma is one of the leaders of the CDS ofPambakuda Gram Panchayat.

The CDS and Pullickal Gram Panchayatleadership selected Ramlath as a master farmer.

demonstrated to others was the challenge.Finally, they could find a few hundred suchmaster trainers across the districts.

Bindu Scaria, from Vathikkudy Gram Panchayat,Idukki Block in Idukki District is one such mastertrainer. She has been selected unanimously bythe CDS and the Gram Panchayat for herleadership abilities, training experience andhaving an excellent leased in plot. Bindu startedas a NHG member in 2003, moved up to ADSleadership and finally to CDS leadership, andshe is currently the chairperson of the CDS atVathikkudy Gram Panchayat. Being a leader ofaround 8000-9000 KDS women, she is as busya person as much as the president of the GramPanchayat. However, that did not deter her tolead the Shreya’s JLG along with four othermembers in her village which she helped form in2010. Shreya’s JLG leased in a 1.4 acre plotfrom one landowner for two years, and with thehelp of Krishi Bhavan, the team grows a numberof vegetables, tuber and fruits in two seasons thatearns them nearly Rs. 1.5 lakh per year for theJLG. As a leader Bindu has been a greatcommunicator and a mobiliser. She helped form

Bindu Scaria with other JLG members on their field


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She is from Pullickal village in Kondoty block ofMalappuram district. In her case she is a leaderof an ADS and is a member of the Madina JLG,which was formed in 2009, and cultivates avariety of vegetables including banana, clusterbean (lobia), cucumber, snake gourd, bittergourd etc on 3.75 acres of leased land. Theannual income from the farming is Rs 1.5 lakhper member. Ramlath is known to be acourageous woman. She was separated from her

house, supports thecontinuation of her children’seducation, and even employsher former husband as alabourer on the same field.As such she was unanimouslyselected as a master trainerfrom this panchayat.

Trainers like Ramlath,Eliyamma and Bindu are nowengaged as master trainersfor implementation of theMKSP programme. They arebeing further trained byagricultural experts from KDSunits, agricultural andhorticultural departments.

Eliyamma on her land in Ernakulam district

These trainings involve modules on motivation,logistics, agricultural techniques, and on thevarious initiatives of KDS that include supportingand monitoring JLGs and working onconvergences with MGNREGA, banks, KrishiBhavan, KVKs, and others. Each master trainer isresponsible to work with 5-6 JLGs, some ofwhich are new. The logistical arrangement issuch that these master trainers may have to movewithin their own ward and another ward.

husband 10 years ago,and since then hassingle handedlymanaged her family oftwo children. She wasthe initiator of MadinaJLG, and meticulouslyworked on the field toensure good crops withreasonable variety, andright marketconnections. Apart fromher field, she is anoutstanding example ofa woman who is singlehandedly looking afterher family, has alsobuilt herself a decent

Banana trees grown by members of Madina JLG, Malappuram


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The principle at work is simple. Createcapacity within the community and usethat capacity for further scale up. Thepedagogic model of replication islearning from the peers, and educatingthe peers. These women carry the peerexperience to tell the prospectivewomen farmers about what works andwhat does not. Their cross learning fromeach other’s experience is yet anothergreat pedagogic resource for theprogramme.

What happens to these women? Talkingto them reveals that they see a differentjourney coming their way. It is a journeyin which they would be recognized aslocal farming experts and thus replacethe stereotype that agricultural expertiseis a male domain.

(Source: Interviews with Master farmers)

4.5 Case Study V

Labour Pooling: An innovation born outof necessity

Family labour of each member and that of thegroup combined is the key to a successful

Labour hiring at the market rate has becomeprohibitive for remunerative cultivation. Kerala’sagricultural labour rates are one of the highestin the country and the labourers have to be paidin cash on a daily or weekly basis. Both areconstraints on profitability and cash flow. Thisdetermines the limit as to how much land canbe optimally leased in by a group depending onthe number of members and their families.

One strategy could be labour pooling, in whichtwo or more JLGs decide to pool their labour towork in respective fields as required. The casestudy here captures this innovation within theKDS programme.

Mary Enashu, Janaki, Annis and Anila arewomen farmers from the Poyya GramPanchayat, Mala block in Thrissur district ofKerala that came together as Bhagyashree JLGin 2009. They belong to very poor householdsthat are termed as BPL families at the time oftheir forming the JLG. Initially they leased innine acres of land from two landowners with theenabling support of the CDS Chairperson. Theland had been lying fallow for a few years. Withthe support from ADS as an implementer ofMGNREGA, the group worked on the leased-infield to prepare the soil for cultivation. Theyinitially started by growing paddy. In 2010,collective leasing arrangement, as

well as other enabling conditions likethe continuity of the lease agreementand the convergence support fromdifferent sources. However, there is alimit to the use of family labour. Mostagricultural practices require labourin several specific time slots: duringplanting or transplanting, during de-weeding, and during harvests. Thework has to be finished at a specifictime during those slots. When theleased-in land is more than a certainsize, family labour is not sufficient tocope up with the requirement of thework. At this time, hiring becomesnecessary. Members of Bhagyashree JLG


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another opportunity came their way, and theyleased in another 2.5 acre on an almostadjacent plot, and started growing bananas,vegetables and spinach on that plot. The leaserent was Rs. 11000/- per acre per year for threeyears.

Managing an 11.5 acre farm by four womenand their families could be quite difficult if theywere to follow systematic agricultural practices.The option was to hire labour at market rate orseek labour participation in a different way.

Another JLG by name Shreemurthy started in thesame area in 2009 and had five members.These five members, too were BPL families. ThisJLG leased in a five acre plot from onelandowner and started paddy cultivation. Theywere also facing the same difficulty with labouras two of their members were unable to devoteadequate time to the work due to illnesses in thefamily.

Mary and Anila approached the members ofShreemurthy JLG to help them. After somediscussion they agreed to pool their labour. Thismeant that three members of Shreemurthy JLGwould provide a pre-determined quantum oflabour on Bhagyashree JLG’s plots reducingtheir labour shortages. In return, the membersof Bhagyashree will provide their labour toShreemuthry JLG’s fields.

This apparently simple solution was not sosimple to achieve and needed to overcomesocial dynamics. The women had to talk to theirmale counterparts so that they would agree tosuch an idea. Several discussions took place todetermine how many labour days would beneeded on both sides, how that will berecorded, and how the labour would be paid.For example a simple question is to understandif both paddies are of same variety, so that iflabour is paid for by production share (which isthe case here) it becomes an equitabledistribution.

The tenacity of the women of both the groupsfinally made it happen. Somehow they could seethe benefits of this collaboration more quicklythan their male counterparts. Once they enteredinto this arrangement, the women becamecloser. They kept perfect records, exchangedtheir records as and when necessary. Theyunderstood each other’s concerns, and settledall accounts in an absolutely transparent way.These women farmers have displayed significanteconomic foresight and agency in deciding topool their labour to cut mutual costs. In 2011-2012, the Bhaygashree group got an annualnet income of Rs. 22000/- per member peryear and Shreemurthy group got Rs. 10,000/-per member per year. This is after accountingfor domestic consumption of paddy, bananaand vegetables of each group member.

Their collaboration is now in its third year. Bythis time, they are not only sharing labour, theyare also sharing input costs. For all practicalpurposes these two JLGs are now working asone group having three plots of leased in land.They appear jointly in all the KDS relatedmeetings, and also jointly engage with theGram Panchayat. They appeared jointly for theinterview as well.

This kind of labour pooling may nothave been incorporated as a verygeneral strategy within KDS, but couldprove to be an effective one. It isgenerally known that the poorer aperson is, she/he is more likely to liveher/his life by the pooling of resources –natural, economic and social. Theappropriate pooling of resources ispossible as a strategy due to thepresence of strong communityinstitutions of the NHG-JLG-ADS-CDSand strong Gram Panchayat. These twoJLGs can be regarded as a pioneer inthis regard.

(Source: Interviews with Members of JLGs Bhagyashree andShreemurthy)


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5.0 Overall Lessons andWay Forward

Both KDS and IKP demonstrate an institutionalmodel of how women collectives whose rootsare from micro-finance practices can work forchanging the women’s role in Indianagriculture, and in the process alter the existingparadigms in force in agriculture towards morepoor friendly, sustainable and forward lookingpractices. As stated in section 2.0, both KDSand IKP have striking similarities. This studyidentifies several of them including in the termsof institutional backbone of women’s three andfour tier collectives; utilizing women as changeagents in agricultural practices, carrying all theinnovations, transforming themselves from alabourer to a ‘owner’ producer, women astechnology experts; and providing support forconvergence. In this section we will draw a fewover-arching lessons from the experiences:

5.1 Positive lessons

1. The multi-tier institutional backbone ofwomen’s collectives is the key to allsuccesses that have been achieved in thesetwo programmes of CMSA and collectiveleasing.

2. Women are playing multi-dimensional microand macro roles and taking upresponsibilities in both the enterprises of IKPand KDS. Several examples can beforegrounded- as planners, technology

carriers, mobilisers, managers,entrepreneurs, negotiators and eveninnovators.

3. Both programmes of CMSA and collectiveleasing have transformed the women as theprimary actors in crop management thusreducing the traditional role of men.

4. According to the women interviewed for thisstudy, their mobility has enhanced vastly,their personal savings have improved, andtheir respect in the family has alsoimproved. In most cases, the women arenow an earning member within the family. Inconclusion, these women have changed thefamily dynamics to some significant extent.

5. A woman as a peer educator is successful inboth the programmes. The women havebroken the myth that agricultural pedagogyand extension is a male domain. This, inaddition to women as demonstrationfarmers, and learning on the job as themain pedagogy, has been very effective inboth programmes.

6. Family income has certainly improved inboth the CMSA and collective leasinginterventions. The women’s own estimates asshared for the case studies are surely atestimony that they are happy with the


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progress they have made. It would bebeneficial though to conduct further andmore systematic income studies.

7. The convergence with government and non-government programmes and institutionshas been a key to the successes achieved.The are many examples: MGNREGA, theAgriculture Department, Gram Panchayats,Digital Green, mobile technologies,marketing cooperatives, etc. which havebeen vital for the successes that have beenachieved so far.

8. Creating resources within the communityhas been the primary capacity buildingstrategy followed in both the programmes.From the experience so far, this has workedout well. Another significant lesson is thatcreating multiple types of capacity in thesame person is often to the advantage ofthe person, as she can have many futureuses of her acquired skills and experiences.

5.2 A few concerns

1. One major concern from the study is thelegality of collective leasing. While collectiveleasing is certainly working on the ground,the illegality of leasing in law is a constraintthat needs to be addressed. Andhra Pradeshhas made a new beginning by legalizingleasing under certain conditions. These twoprogrammes provide ample evidence tomake a robust case of liberalizing the lawsof leasing in favour of the poor.

2. Although the women have certainlyprogressed a lot in their engagement inagriculture, now the time has come to lookat the more structural issues of women inagriculture, from a truly gender perspective.It would be useful to apply any of theavailable gender frameworks in agricultureto assess how the two programmes fare.This is more relevant in the context of MKSPthat is now working in 12 states through its

state and non-state partners aiming to reachat least 2 million women.

3. Both the IKP and KDS Missions havestructured gender programmes that workmostly on domestic violence and relatedissues. There is enormous scope for thegender programmes to get involved withgender issues in women and agriculture thatare so foundational that such associationcould go a long way to engender Indianagriculture in a true sense and build on thepositive experience of IKP and KDS.

4. While the convergence efforts are exciting,for long term sustainability some of theseconvergence efforts need to beinstitutionalized. Kerala’s strong GramPanchayats provide one such pathway forinstitutionalization, but may not be the onlypathway when it comes to other states.

5.3 Way Forward

There are a number of practices and lessonsthat can be adopted in other similarprogrammes. At the same time, it may beremembered that local situations within suchprogrammes and the enabling environment thatcreates it would vary and therefore the selectionof appropriate aspects or programmeinterventions would have to be made carefully. Itshould also be recognized that both theprogrammes have some areas for improvementsand consolidations to be made so as to makethem more robust and exemplary.


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New Women Transforming Indian Agriculture - Landesa · 2017. 10. 20. · 4.1 Collective Leasing:...

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