Cultivating better lives of villagers in Kumaon

This September, villagers in remote Kumaoni hamlets rejoiced as they harvested a plant with bluish green leaves. With a short growth cycle of 78 days, the plant fixed nitrogen in the soil, replenishing it for the next crop. Moreover, they earned as much as Rs 30,000 from the harvested Indigofera — source of the blue dye India was once known worldwide for. 

All this was due to the efforts of Avani Kumaon, a grassroot organisation that has been working since 1997 to improve rural lives and livelihoods using sustainable technologies. Co-founded by Rashmi Bharti and Rajnish Jain, Avani was initially a branch of Tilonia’s Barefoot College, and engaged with solar electrification of remote hill villages. However, the duo noticed something about the predominantly weaving communities they worked with. Bharti recounts: “To our surprise, many couldn’t afford Rs 30 a month for electricity.” Earnings from weaving were, they found, dismal. That is how the idea of creating and marketing locally dyed and woven handicraft was born.

“We believed that their traditional, woven, naturally dyed products had a market,” she says. “We just had to look for it.” The decision to focus on natural dyes was a no-brainer. Not only had the duo seen a growing fashion demand for environmentally friendly dyes, these also produced clean effluents that could easily be used in agriculture. Avani started weaving products with naturally dyed wool in 1999 under the aegis of Kumaon EarthCraft Self Reliant Cooperative. 

They have, since, standardised the replication of over 30 colours and their palette has more than 80 shades from different plants. “We’ve used waste (like pomegranate skins) and invasive species for their dye yielding properties,” Bharti says. “As we started purchasing dye materials for our own textile dyeing, we saw that the people started planting and protecting the trees. The impact on regeneration of forests and protection of biodiversity was direct, albeit in a small area.”

This became a game changer. The Avani team decided to encourage the cultivation of some of these materials, not only in private lands, but in the village commons as well. “In 10 years and across 64 villages, we planted over 10,000 trees, including walnut, pomegranate, Terminalia indica (harad) and soap nut (used for washing),” says Bharti. Consequently, now this NGO, based in a remote Himalayan village, has become arguably the only organisation offering such a variety of natural colours — all grown by local stakeholders. 

So far, Avani has disbursed almost Rs 2 crore in wages and salaries. The income from this programme has enabled local stakeholders to construct homes, pay medical bills, educate children and, most important, provided a reason for them to not migrate to the metros. “We’ve seen many young girls earning enough not only to buy solar lights for their houses, but to save for their dowries and even finance their own marriages,” says Bharti. With financial independence, young girls in the village have become more self-reliant and started delaying their marriages. This year’s harvest of indigo has also shown villagers who haven’t yet participated in the programme how beneficial it can be as a rotation crop. This year, Avani’s farming partners have harvested 10,000 kg of indigo raw material from the first harvest alone. 

Avani is sharing indigo seeds with organisations and cultivators in other states. “The idea is to promote the use of indigo dyeing and enable farmers to earn an extra income,” says Bharti. Meanwhile, they have ambitious plans for their own region. “Currently we are working with 1,400 families,” she says. “We now want to reach 4,000 in the next four years.” 

Plans to construct a dye-extraction plant in a remote village that would decentralise production are in the pipeline. “We’re looking for corporate partners, not only to fund our expansion but also to use our dyes commercially,” says Bharti, who wants to see natural dyes become more mainstream. “By doing so, we’d create a scalable model of an enterprise that can consciously maintain linkages between skills, resources and environmentally friendly processes — and still be commercially viable.”

For more, visit avani-kumaon.org

Next, the story of a tiny Nagaland outfit that has singlehandedly saved the Amur Falcon from decimation