(GIST OF KURUKSHETRA) Making Lakhpati Didis

(JULY-2024)

Making Lakhpati Didis

Introduction:

DAY-NRLM is one of the world’s largest poverty eradication programmes across the world, being run under the aegis of the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India.
The Mission through its inclusion strategy has mobilised more than 10 crore households into 91 lakh Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and their higher community institutions.
These households through the above institutions are being provided capitalisation support to enable them inter-loaning and to connect them to formal financial institutions.

Strategy:

An end-to-end strategy is the value chain approach. The objective is to identify and address the critical constraints in a coordinated way, thereby unlocking the potential of the value chain.

The process comprises of:

Asset Creation for enhancing production and processing/value addition,
honing skills of producers to augment their productivity,
ensuring access to credit at affordable rates and
facilitating access to market and improved technologies. In addition, wherever, a sizable population exists, focus is also placed on small ruminant productivity enhancement, horticultural diversification, and climate-resilient agriculture.

On the front end (value addition and market linkage), the cluster collectivises and aggregates individual produce at the village and/or cluster level through small Producers’ Collectives like Producers Groups (PGs). These PGs are informal institution that aggregate the individual produce, thus reducing the transaction cost of primary value addition and market linkages.

In more extensive geography, these small producers’ collectives may be federated into Producers Enterprises for larger aggregation, secondary value addition/processing, packaging, labelling, and market linkage/marketing directly and/or through partnership.

Mahila Kisans (Womenfarmers)- The Torch Bearers

In IFC, the Mahila Kisans are central actor in every intervention, both as farmer and the entrepreneur. The project design and implementation have enough provisions for the active participation of women. Still, this issue is complex and present in every sphere.

To Provide end to end solution under various interventions
To enhance the income of rural household at every level of intervention
To empower women through collective livelihood action

Implementation Framework

The grounding of Integrated Farming Cluster requires a step-by-step intervention in order to achieve desired goal and objective of providing end-to-end solution with diversified livelihood activities at the household level. The framework consists of:
Identification of Geography: The identification of geographical contour of a given integrated farming cluster is important in terms of approachability, common commodities, and similar social structure. The areas where there are significant possibilities for creation of livelihood assets through mission convergence with Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare, etc. are preferred.
Identification of Households: The project beneficiaries would be drawn from existing SHGs, with those included in mission sponsored farm livelihood activities. The interested women farmers, being included in the IFC cluster, must have agriculture or livestock rearing as their core livelihoods. They should be actively involved with the Farmer Field School and may be a part of the existing producer group or producer company.

Conclusion

Integrated Farming Cluster is a new and innovative concept introduced by DAY-NRLM with aim to provide sustainable and multiple livelihood options to the rural poor SHG households in a structured way. Since inception, due to proper planning and market-centred strategy, it has been able to induce confidence in the community and bring out entrepreneurial qualities of the individuals who are working as link point for different livelihood options across the value chain. This program can certainly be a milestone in enhancing income of women farmers much more than the vision of Lakhpati Didis.