Raju Adivasi resides in Neemdana village, 13 km from Shivpuri. Like all 76 Scheduled Tribe households dependent on manual labour work for livelihood Raju was also working as a labourer and sometimes driving. Like most of the tribals, he is not educated and earned little which was barely able to meet needs of wife and two daughters. His situation took a turn towards worse when his 75 goats were stolen while they were grazing. Though he had 1-acre agriculture land, he could not cultivate anything on it because of non-availability of water. His financial woes kept on worsening.
Raju attended a meeting on organic farming organised in his village under BRLF-EU programme. In the meeting, he said he was not able to cultivate anything on his land because of non-availability of water. The cluster coordinator was telling about government’s flagship scheme MNREGA-Kapildhara. Raju asked if he could dig that well and linked it linked with MNREGA latter. He prepared his proposal and submitted in gram sabha.
On getting nod, he constructed the well. After some months Raju got first instalment for well construction (Kapildhara Koop). With the availability, he cultivated maize and vegetables like bottle gourd, okra, bitter gourd, etc., by applying NPM agriculture. For pest management Parhit provided training. His 80 per cent vegetables were sold out from his farm yielding him good returns.
Now his children are studying in Shivpuri. A solar registration has been done and he will receive the device soon. Raju plans to rear goat and poultry and use their garbage for composed preparation.
When viewed in retrospect, Raju faced unemployment, financial problems and unavailability of basic sources of life. Now he has got permanent source of livelihood through Kapildhara Koop and doing farming and vegetable cultivation. As he is doing organic farming, his profit is better.
