A 2008-batch IAS officer who served as district collector between October 2014 and April 2017, and officials of the agriculture department, have transformed the farm economy of scores of villages in the rain-fed district of Osmanabad, Marathwada, Maharashtra. For his work, on August 21, 2019, Prashant Narnaware was among 15 district magistrates honoured with ‘The Indian Express Excellence in Governance Awards’ that celebrated the finest work done by district magistrates across the country.
Osmanabad, a rain-fed district of Marathwada, is often in the news for suicides by debt-ridden farmers whose crops fail, owing to lack of water. In 2015, 1,130 farmers in the region killed themselves, and over 800 committed suicide in 2016, of whom around 500 did so due to crop failure.
Narnaware changed the dry lands of Osmanabad into a hub of floriculture. He was moved by the farmer suicides in Osmanabad and to double farmers’ income, he formed farmer groups to tackle farmer issues. He, along with local farmer groups started a project, Krishi Kranti, which aimed at improving the livelihood of farmers and help them surpass financial distress.
It was in 2015 that Narnaware started an initiative to bring farmers together as groups to enable them to receive aid from banks and avail subsidies under various government schemes. The administration arranged workshops and invited agricultural specialists, successful agri-entrepreneurs farmers, and chairmen of various agricultural groups and companies. Experts from well-known institutes such as Xavier Institute of Management (XIMB), Bhubaneswar, and Tata Institute of Social Science (tiss), Mumbai, were asked to visit the area and give their suggestions.
About 2.83 lakh farmers were brought together to form 14,632 farmer groups and 58 ‘farmer companies’ across the Osmanabad district. These groups undertook different agricultural activities like seed production, agricultural mechanisation, protective agriculture and irrigation, processing, branding, and marketing of produce. Krishi Kranti ensured public participation through meetings for consulting about the project and its implementation between officials, experts, and farmers. over 3,000 meetings were held between 2015 and 2017..
The farmer groups not only helped in getting financial aid from banks, all of the farmers acting as insurers for each other, but also helped them negotiate with buyers as well as input suppliers by establishing a direct link with sellers and buyers. The groups helped in bulk buying of inputs, which often reduced the cost of input by 20–30 per cent. In this way, between 2015 and 2017, the district saw an exponential rise in the number of polyhouses which grew gerbera, a flower of Portuguese origin, and marketed them outside Maharashtra. The protected floriculture also proved that profitable farming can be done even in drought-prone areas.
Prashant Narnaware became the district collector of Osmanabad in 2014, and by that time, 29 polyhouses had been developed. When his term ended in 2017, there were 266 polyhouses in the district. Not only this, Narnaware also started ‘Beyond Sugarcane’, a project to wean farmers away from cultivating the water-intensive crop and encourage them to grow crops which needed less water and provided best income, such as soybean and tur, apart from horticulture.
By implementing the project, Padoli village has become a village of polyhouses. The village is situated about 39 km from Osmanabad, with a population of 5,000 people. It has 20 polyhouses growing gerbera. About 170 to 200 villagers are involved in cultivating, harvesting, and marketing of the poduce.
Infobits
* Polyhouse A polyhouse or a greenhouse is a house or structure made of translucent material like glass or polyethylene where the plants grow and develop under controlled climatic conditions. The size of the structure can differ from small shacks to big-size buildings. Above all, a greenhouse is a glasshouse whose interiors become warm when exposed to sunbeams as the house stops the greenhouse gases from escaping. So, when it is cold outside, the temperature inside is survival-friendly and warm for the plants.
Fruits that can be grown in them are papaya, strawberry, etc. Vegetables that can be grown include cabbage, bitter gourd, capsicum, radish, cauliflower, chili, coriander, onion, spinach, tomato, etc. Flowers like carnation, gerbera, marigold, orchid, and rose can also be easily grown.
* The Indian Express Excellence in Governance Awards The Indian Express Excellence in Governance Awards are biennial awards that celebrate the finest work done by district magistrates across the country—the women and men at ground zero of governance, who script change that touches countless lives.
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