Indian society is leading the way long where according to Oxfam India, 85% of rural women are engaged in agriculture, yet only around 13% of them own any land. A female in rural India is born to serve her younger siblings, then her husband and his family throughout her life. However, when asked, what a woman gets in return is nothing more than the clothes she wore if her husband kicks her out. She doesn’t even get her rights for her children as a mother. This has been the story of every 2nd Garasia woman in the Abu Road block of the Sirohi district of Rajasthan.

Manju Garasia is a woman farmer and a budding entrepreneur who was deprived of education and was married at the early age of 15 to Hansaram Garasia. She came to the village called Siyava, 8 km away from the Abu Road block, where there are 836 houses of the Garasia tribe. Garasias are the third largest tribe in Rajasthan, historically famous as the great archers but now their livelihood entirely based on farming and labour work. Being from a tribal family, Manju had been working on the farms for a long time and fortunately, her experience gave her the courage to support her new family when her husband was unemployed.

The decision-making power among women in all strata has been weak but when Manju when joined the self-help group in 2013, she realised that one can break a single piece of wood easily but not a cord. She became an active member of SHG and started attending regular meetings and built her personality as an early adopter. Her in-laws used to cultivate maize, wheat, mustard, cluster beans and chilly which were only sufficient for self-consumption. Manju had to look after her three children and their health. She started selling vegetables near to the famous Veer Baba temple but was laid back by pest attacks on the vegetables and limited production even after lots of chemical treatment. Fortunately, she got a moment of bliss when she heard about the green shed net under the Project Bajaj by (PRofessional Assistant for Development ActioN) PRADAN. She took a loan from her SHG and had it installed to cultivate quality vegetables without any disease.

In her struggle to repay the loan, her mother-in-law supported her and started doing work in the field with her. When she first produced tomato, brinjal, chilly and okra, she earned Rs 32,000 from them in 3 months. But the cultivation of other crops, gram and wheat, failed badly as production was very low. Her mother-in-law exclaimed that she has ruined the fertility of the land as otherwise the land near the veer baba temple was very fertile. In her mother-in-law’s time, the production was very high, and she never had to beg anyone. Manju at that moment could not understand much but when she encountered another person from PRADAN in a meeting, she was able to relate with her mother-in-law. The meeting was on organic farming and its benefit for soil, health and production. Here, she understood that the chemicals she was adding to save her crops, were instead making her land barren. Hence, for once she tried not to use any chemicals in her vegetables and cultivated the saplings in a green shed with organic manure. She got one cow from her parents and one was from her mother-in-law. She later built a cowshed to collect their dung and urine, from which she prepared a bio-input that she had learnt in a training from PRADAN, called Jeevamrutha, by adding jaggery, gram flour, and neem leaves.

Her organically cultivated vegetables started to be popular among the selective customers that now she grows and stocks things as per orders. Last year she cultivated vegetables in 62 decimals (1 decimal = 1/100 acre) of the land out of 279 decimals that her husband owns and earned Rs 1,80,000 from it in a year. She also sells Jeevamrutha for Rs 10 per litre and earns 22,500 per year from it. With her hard work and support, she is now a person of more than two lakhs per year.

After looking at the demand, understanding the market of organic products in the meetings and training by stakeholders like KVK, PRADAN and Agriculture Department Rajasthan, she got motivated and took part in an organic wheat demonstration by PRADAN. She sowed 40 kg of wheat in 60 decimals from which she got a produce of 700 kg of wheat. She shared that the input cost was the bare minimum in organic wheat, and with that, she saved Rs 3,300 this time on 60 decimals of land. The chapati of organic wheat is softer and though the size of the grains was a bit small, it was heavier than the chemically cultivated wheat. Her mother-in-law was also happy to see her going back to the natural practice on the farm and now she loves her like her own daughter.

People from her neighborhood also encouraged her and were curious to know about the dark green colour of the field she had of wheat this time. She proudly explained to them and motivated them to try organic wheat for the health of the soil and the family as well. Her mother-in-law saw her pure intentions towards her community and supported her as she became an Executive Committee (EC) member of the Cluster Level Federation (CLF).

Even so, she still struggles to keep up the pace with others as no matter what she has to depend on others to read and write. But her husband Hansaram, has shown his support and taught her to write her name and started working at their farm with her. Manju bai promises to herself that she’ll educate her children and won’t marry them at an early age.

She shared that it feels good to do something for our mother earth, it gives her strength that she is taking responsibility for her ancestors’ land and re-generating it with organic manure, compost manure, Jeevamrutha, etc. She says

“Didi, aane waale saal se main Urea or DAP ki line me nahi lagungi. Sab jaivik hi karungi”