A S I L E N T R E V O L U T I O N

Stories of some Innovative Farmers in Swarupnagar Block: Anada Mondal

Ananda Mondal and his wife Rita and their two daughters lived in Mallikpur village under Swarupnagar Block. Mallikpur is on the Bangladesh border. Most of the villagers in this locality are involved with smuggling and illegal trafficking of drugs and women.

During my visit on 3rd March ’09 to Anada Mondal’s house, I was asked by the Border Security Personnel about the reason for my visit to Mallikpur. There are many non irrigated lands but no body is interested in farming as a man can earn much more through smuggling rather than farming.

After reaching Mallikpur, I asked local boys to show me the Ananda’s house. They gave me the direction and added that villagers had termed Anada as ‘Chona Dada’ (i.e., cow urine dada). Concealing my chuckle, I asked them about the reason for this name and they told me that Anada had opened an agriculture school in his home and teaching the illiterate farmers about the utility of cow urine, cow dung and vermicompost. After reaching there, I saw that Rita was making food and she told that Ananda knew that I would come and gave me some drawing sheets to look.

I saw that there were some excellent paintings. I asked her who had drawn these. She replied that her daughter and also expressed her sorrow that very soon their daughters would give up studies as no girl from that village went for high school.

After a while Ananda came and we three sat together for discussion. I came to know that 4 years ago, Ananda and Rita decided to give up farming as costs of manures, pesticides, seeds were increasing day by day and planned to start small business. That time they went to their relatives’ house at Kalshi village (in Baduria Block) for taking some suggestions on small business and by chance there they met with our staff, Sujit and Noni Gopal at a farmer’s-group meeting in Kalshi. Initially they were surprised by listening that one can produce rice without using inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.

They invited Sujit and Noni Gopal to visit his farm. Within a month, three Swanirvar staff, Sujit, NoniGopal and Tarun went there and advised him to start Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in Rice and to make a small kitchen garden adjacent to his house.

Following all the steps in IPM he got 25% more production from his 5 bighas of land but his expenses reduced by 30%. Gradually he became an organic farmer. From 2007 he is using only organic composts, compost tea and bio pest controllers like soap-garlic- kerosene mixture, fresh cow urine and neem solvent mixture, etc in his farm.

In 2008, Rita went to a Swanirvar’s meeting on Land shaping and came to know there were multipurpose use of Pond and pond bank. She asked for a loan from DRCSC through Swanirvar and got loan for land shaping. With that money she had reshaped her pond; had made some plots for rice and some for fishes also made trellis on bank. Now she is producing rice and fish together and has planted lots of banana, papaya, turmeric and Elephant Foot Yam plants on the bank. On the trellis she is producing Bottle Gourds, Bitter Gourds. She has also planted some herbal plants like Prickly Amaranth, Indian Aloe, Ivy gourd (wild), Creat and Drumstick tree, etc.
In December 2008, Anada got some training on SRI system from our staff, Narayan and applied that concept in ½ bigha land area. When he was planting single saplings (Indian system of rice cultivation is to plant a bunch of saplings together) in his field all the local farmers thought that he had last the basic sense of farming. But after a month it was found that SRI was very successful and some of his paddy was taken by the district agriculture office, Barasat and Agriculture Training centre, Fulia, Nadia for demonstrating SRI in rice.

When I went to see SRI paddy with Ananda and Rita, a local farmer namely Arabindu came to us and told that he was taking training on SRI from Ananda and would apply it in his field for the coming session. He also told me that as they sprayed lots of pesticides in their paddy, they never saw butterflies and birds in fields. But in Ananda’s field one could always see lots of butterflies and birds. This had become a place of ananda ( Anada means joyfulness) for them.

Lastly, I requested Anada and Rita for a joint photo as they have none and they told me that I might take it in their vegetable garden adjacent to their house. There I went with them and suddenly saw that Rita was making some noise and surprisingly all of their hens and cocks came to them with their young ones . I took it (pic-1) both in my cam and in my heart to keep it for ever.


Reported by:
Nilangshu Gain,
Swanirvar

Mob: +91 9647196250