MP village 'milks' govt help on way to prosperity

REBUILDING RURAL INDIA

Jaitpura Kurd is a tiny village tucked away in the Rajgarh district of Madhya Pradesh. There is little that is remarkable about Jaitpura Kurd, except that it is an example of how a village stuck in poverty can turn itself around.

A village that once depended on agriculture, Jaitpura Kurd has made dairy farming its prime activity. The result: Every family involved in the business is making a decent profit.

The opportunity came in 2001 in the form of the Madhya Pradesh District Poverty Initiatives Project (DPIP), which encouraged villagers to form common interest groups of around five people each. With the World Bank providing Rs 461 crore, each beneficiary (one per family) was given a grant of up to Rs 20,000.

The groups bought high-yield buffaloes and cows. In 2004, Rs 6 lakh were provided through an innovation fund set up under the project for an automated milk collection centre.

The villagers deposit the milk at the centre, where they get a computer-generated receipt mentioning the quality and quantity of the produce and the amount payable.

"The village now produces 600 litres to 700 litres of milk everyday and we get Rs 15-20 per litre based on quality," says Ram Kailash, president of the Jaitpura Kurd Dairy Cooperative Society, an association of dairy CIGs in the village.

So, on a good day, the villagers can make as much as Rs 14,000. Not bad for a community that was not so long ago steeped in poverty.

The movement that started with 37 people in 2002-03 has 141 farmers and 29 dairy CIGs (out of 40 CIGs in the village).

Kailash, a member of the five-member Ganesh Bhais Palan Sangh, says, "With around Rs 1 lakh government grant and our own contributions, we bought 10 buffaloes from Ludhiana and Haryana."

The collected milk is kept in a freezer and is taken by the Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal) Dairy Federation, which pays once in ten days, say officials.

"We save on transport costs as we don't have to go to the towns to sell," says Ramesh Chandra Dangi, a resident of the village.

While the men in the village focus on agriculture, women and children take care of the cattle. "With 10-15 litres milk from my two buffaloes, I get around Rs 6,000 a month. After deducting the input costs, I earn Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 per month," said Dangi.

In 2001, the government found that 202 out of 289 families in the village needed support. The villagers used to toil in the fields with little water and were in debt for different reasons.

Six years later, there are visible signs of prosperity. "My business used to run on credit. Now, villagers pay in cash," said owner of a kirana shop in the village.

"The village showed a good potential for dairy and so we focused on that. While the DPIP extended Rs 34.38 lakh for these projects, the villagers contributed Rs 1.88 lakh. A new road has provided easy access to the village and support to irrigation has led to an increase in the total area irrigated area," said Ravindra Pastor, project coordinator, DPIP, Madhya Pradesh.

The dairy initiative has set in a new White Revolution in the state. Officials said there were 7,785 dairy CIGs in the 14 districts where the programme was operating.

As many as 35,000 milch animals have been procured under the project and the yield now is 1.25 lakh litres per day. The income from animal husbandry has increased by 158 per cent in these districts, officials say.

Amidst reports of farmers' suicides and farmland acquisitions, there is some good news from the rural heartlands of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, where government intervention has helped farmers improve their earnings. Here is the second of a three-part report...