Villagers script a success story

Expressbuzz, Jan 25, 2010
Uma Shankar Kar
BHAWANIPATNA: Every inch of the land in Salaegaon is lush green in stark contrast to what it was around four years ago. Mass migration and acute poverty were synonymous to the village as floods almost every year left the agriculture land sand-cast and the entire landscape turned into sand dunes engulfing the agriculture land.


The distressed farmers of the village, about 45 km from here, preferred to rewrite their destiny and they did. Hrudanand Sahu a young village farmer and Naib Sarpanch of Dumria gram panchayat said 108 families of Salaegaon changed the odds in their favour. They reclaimed the sand-cast lands and cultivated cash crops which helped them recover from the past losses and start life afresh, he said. To use the land holistically oil seeds and pulses have been grown in the mixed cropping process.

The once dull village fields are now covered with varieties of pulses, oil seeds and other crops. While sunflower crops extend to as far as the eyes can see, groundnut, castor, mustard and pulses like bengal gram and kandul grown in large have given farmers the taste of success. Some farmers even preferred experimenting by growing onions and wheat by utilising water from wells and chahalas (temporary wells). The novel idea to set up kitchen gardens to meet the family’s daily needs has helped adjust their expenses too.

Besides the land holding tenants, other landless villagers also sharing the fruits of changes by cultivating land as share cropper or contact farmers and there is a visible change in the socio-economic condition of the village.

In the last Kharif season all farmers and share croppers of the village earned anything between Rs 12000 and Rs 1 lakh from groundnut farming depending on the extent of land covered.

They are now ready with the second crop of groundnut for the rabi season.

In the absence of help from agriculture department the farmers are gathering new farming ideas and agro technology from watershed mission team and SVA an agriculture related NGO besides concentrating on agriculture-related programmes on television and Radio.

Despite the vast development the village still cut off from outside world. One has to cross Udanti through the fair weather road from Borda side and take the incomplete kuchha road to reach the village. A permanent road to the village and a bridge over Udanti river could just help the villagers market their produce and earn dividends. A cold-storage facility would come as a shot in the arm for them by preventing crops from getting rotten. A rich, beautiful and fertile village all it needs now is Government attention.