Introduction
Come harvest season and you will see woman working on the farms in Bihar—all busy cutting and gathering the ripe wheat crop while the men are missing. The women who do the farming belong to either small landholders or sharecroppers. As per the Economic Survey 2017–18, with rural to urban migration by men growing, the agriculture sector is witnessing ‘feminisation’. An increasing number of women are taking on multiple roles as cultivators, entrepreneurs, and labourers.
On the other hand, there are families that own medium–large farms—quite a few in every block. They do not find male labourers to work on their farms as even the youth from these families are out in neighbouring cities to study or in metros for jobs.
Reasons for Feminisation
One of the most important reasons of women coming into farming is the migration of man from rural areas, particularly drought-hit ones, to metro cities like Delhi, Punjab, or Mumbai. Men migrate in search of work or to farm-labour-starved Punjab and Haryana, forcing women from families with small or marginal land holding to work as farmers. They do not have any other option other than doing Kheti. In the absence of men, women toil hard to raise their kids. In these areas, palayan (migration) is the fact of life and everybody lives with it.
Affected Areas
The Mithila-Kosi-Seemanchal region, comprising about half of the total 40 parliamentary constituencies in the state of Bihar, is home to many small farmers and landless families.
This is the story of thousands of villages, including Madhubani, Samastipur, Sheohar Jhaujharpur, Ujiarpur, Supaul, Araria, Madhipura, Khagaria, Purunia, Katihar, Kishanganj, Bhagalpur, Munger, Begusarai, Sitamarhi, Hajipur, and Muzaffarpur, where migration and separation from families is a common story. For lack of work, men have to leave their families in search of work in metro cities like Delhi and earn from ` 8,000 to 10,000 a month.
Self-help Groups
Self-help groups consist of women who toil from morning to evening on farms tilling, seeding, irrigating, cutting, and gathering crops in the absence of men, who migrate to urban areas. These women farmers are not eligible to get the assured income support of ` 6,000 per annum as they don’t own even a small tract of land. In such a scenario, women and girls have to come out and join hands to sustain their families.
The families struggled hard for survival once the men migrated. Village women used to discuss what they could do to save their families from drought. Then they realised that they had to cultivate at least for their own livelihood. And thus, it all started. Women have also turned to organic farming for cultivating indigenous varieties of vegetables and food grains. These crops require less water and no fertiliser. They had a very clear objective at the beginning—to cultivate for their own survival; not for the market.
Resistance from Family Members In the beginning, it was not easy for these women to come out of the threshold of their houses. Some argued as to what could they achieve when men could not do anything in the face of drought and destiny? Some even ridiculed then when they claimed that farming could be a beneficial venture.
The crops that are grown include wheat, jowar, onion, soya, and vegetables. The farming women do not completely depend on agriculture, at times, they also rear poultry to sustain the family in case the crop fails. They have, thus, created parallel sources of income, such as poultry, goat rearing, dairy, etc. to survive even a drought. They are also galvanising women to join self-help group, that are cultivating not only for families but also for the market.
Silent but Significant Change
Ignoring criticism, ridicule, and resistance, these brave women farmers are heralding a silent but significant change on the ground in the drought-hit Marathwada region in Maharashtra. Hundreds of them have successfully developed oases in their parched villages by using traditional techniques and organic farming. A difference between men and women farmers is that man farmers opt for cash crops like cotton and sugarcane and are interested in farming when water is abundant, whereas women farmers have come out where both water and money are little at hand out of necessity.
Thus, women farmers are proving themselves to be a major driving force to bring about change. Even as there is a rising number of farmers committing suicide, there are others like these women who are working to combat drought and poverty.
Besides, NGOs and government agencies have also played the role of facilitators for the women. Vikas Kamble of Swayam Shikshan Prayog is one such NGO, working with women farmers. Nevertheless, the government should also create other means of employment to stop migration of men from rural to urban areas, who painfully leave their families for an earning of ` 5,000 to ` 10,000 a month—not at all worth leaving a family behind.