Review of Field Trip and Ground Work in Adilabad Dist.

                     I had a proclivity to visit good places of work, model places, novel methods of developments taken up by organisations and think that these good works must inspire more people and organisations to emulate them in their own way. When you see wonderful acts, the inspiration must make you to react in equal or greater magnitude. This is Newton's third law applied to psyche of people. People reacting to good work is what makes the places turn from ordinary to golden standard. Fortunately, I had been to one of those epicentres of places few weeks back. I had seen the work of an organisation called Ekalavya Foundation in combined Adilabad district in Telengana. I went there unaware of what I will see and what my trip will be like but saw glimpses of humanity in the work of that organisation. The volunteers and workers of the foundation really took care of the tribals in a way so as to meeting their requirements and mitigating the challenges of their lives.

                     There are around 104 million tribals in India or 8.6% of population are scheduled tribes. They are the most vulnerable section of the society and there ought to be many of these groups or organisations to pave them a way of living. The country cannot be termed as 'developed' without taking care of this large proportion of population. To begin with, the foundations work started with tribal communities in Adilabad district and pioneering work has been done in the fields of Education, Health, Livelihoods and Agriculture activities. The foundation is started by Sri Venugopal Reddy in 2006 and currently spanned across 24 districts of Telengana and Andhra Pradesh. Venugopal ji is a RSS pracharak where he worked in various capacities till 60 years and after that he started the Foundation in the retirement age to work for downtrodden and most needy sections of the society. The foundation is started in Adilabad district and only 13 years old but had done a lot of good work.

                     Sustainability does not come if you are heavily dependent on few leaders. What after the leaders tenure comes to an end and will it be the same. Sustainability comes from self-reliant communities. The villagers are made partners in conception, planning and execution of activities. The activities will not come to halt if someone is not at the helm. In this post, I will provide you some details of organisations work in and around Adilabad area since it is the place we visited and seen the work first hand. The Ekalavya Foundation of Adilabad area covers 4 districts, 22 mandals, 192 villages, 20,761 families and 32,366 acres of watershed programs for water conservation. The foundation mainly works in the areas of health, education, agriculture and water conservation. The foundation established Tribal training center, does convergence activities with other departments and organisations of expertise and run Farmers Associations through farmer clubs etc. Initially before the development works began, the tribals of the area resisted outsiders and lead life as naxalites. The area has been replete with naxalism and they lead their lives in very poor conditions. But with persistent efforts from workers of this foundation, the tribals slowly began to trust them and came to acknowledge that they are there to look after their welfare. The paradigm shift of tribals has been significant because of the helping hands of the foundation and the hitherto naxalites have not only came into the mainstream but also getting lot of help from the organisation to lead a decent living.

                     To get into the details of the work done by the organisation in education, it has adopted 148 government schools in 4 districts. Kit bags to 6^th class students at which class the drop out rate is high, extra curricular activities, career guidance or motivation classes to 10^th class students, merit awards to toppers of 10^th class and other activities covering 36,882 students in 148 schools. As part of health, the main activities are preventive homeo medicine for sunstroke to 10000 families, free eye camps and surgeries, blood donation camps, Sanitary napkins, soak pits and toilets construction.

                     The main area of work is in agriculture and water shed programs. The divisions in watershed program are Entry Point Activities(EPA), Institutions & Capacity Building(I&CB), Natural Resource Management (NRM), Productivity Enhancement (PE), Livelihoods and crop loans. 5000 farmers and poor people are beneficiaries of this work. Because of this watershed program which is implemented from 2008 to 2015 there has been increase in irrigation land, decrease in single crop farmers, increase in double crop farmers, mixed crop farmers, ground water table has come up, less families migrated, more yields in agriculture crops and more livelihoods created.  Around 450 acres of waste land has been converted to agriculture land with boulder removal activity. Due to water table availability near to ground surface, 158 open wells are dug to facilitate 474 acres of land. This has resulted in 30% rise in farmer income and crop diversification as well. Some other initiatives are also taken up and all these watershed programs are implemented in 25000 acres in erstwhile Adilabad district.

                     122 Farmer clubs are presently being run in 122 villages which has 2562 farmers as members. The activities are monthly meetings, Savings, Internal Lending, Book keeping, Shramadan, Trainings, Exposure visits. The benefits are increased unity, information transfer, agriculture loans with less interest rates, better relationship with bank, financial discipline and group marketing. Farmer federations have been setup which has 3500 farmers as shareholders from 77 villages. The activities include agriculture loans, livelihood loans, fertilizer shop, collective marketing etc. 1.5 crore business has been done through these federations. The benefits are agricultural loans with less interest rate, loans to poorest of poor to create livelihoods, timely provision of seeds, fertilizer and pesticide to shareholders, minimum support price to the farmers with collective marketing etc. In all the places, the Foundation has been working towards making agriculture profitable, environmentally sustainable by promoting organic agriculture.

                     After seeing these water conservation works and better agriculture practises, one can feel that a dream is coming true i.e. to make agriculture productive and profitable to the farmer. We should all work towards the cause in whatever way we can to furthering sophistication in agriculture and improving the returns. The feeding hands should not be left in disarray taking extreme steps. The farmers taking extreme steps and ending lives is the worst reward we are giving for feeding us. The farmer should grow, farm produce should grow and profits should follow suit. Increasing the income of the farmer is an urgent necessity and looking after their wellbeing is topmost priority. The farmer should lead a dignified and happy life and not burdened with debts. Profits must clear the debts and farmer should not be in a position to borrow money for farming. There must be sufficient reserves to take of initial investment. They should lead a life with financial discipline and proper planning. After visiting these places, a faint feeling of better and brighter future comes to mind if the work of intervention and consultation is carried on unabatedly and increase its purview to more places and people. The work in the last 13 years is a good first step and still a lot is left to be done. The nation needs more of these organisations to come to the aid of struggling people and educating them with good practises in living.