my journey for my venture...........................

Finally I started my work in second week of April 09. I have agriculture background; have been a farmer for around 4 years. The knowledge which I got during farming helped me a lot during convincing farmers for organic farming. Now farmers have started realizing the harms to the soil, environment and almost all eatables caused by the chemicals used in the agriculture. But the farmers are not anymore like they were. Now farmers have become agro businessman. They focus more on high profits by any way. To get high returns in minimum investments, farmers frequently use chemicals. Farmers are much aware about the harms caused by the chemicals to fertility of the soil, but they think if they will not put chemicals in the fields they will not get good returns. About organic farming, people think if they start organic farming this year good results will start after at least 2-3 years which is not anymore true now. I started my work against their attitude towards organic farming.
For the first few weeks, I used to visit at least 3 villages a day met 60-70 farmers. During hot summers in UP it’s very difficult to visit rural areas and becomes worst when you have to go alone and there is no public transport available so u have to go on your foot. The only motivation which I had was my work. After sometime, I thought if I alone visit 3 village’s day and meet 60 or 70 farmers a day, it will take very long to cover a small area.
I thought how I can get some more people to work with me. I was not in condition to hire people for my work due to lack of funds. I went to some local institutions and asked for some interns. These institutions welcomed me and provided good support. I conducted interviews in two institutions and selected thirty two interns. All the interns were students of MBA and joined me for their summer training. I clearly mentioned to these institutions that I was not going to pay any stipend to those interns. These institutions felt, there is immense learning for their students in the work which I was offering and promptly suggested the students to join me. Out of thirty two selected students twenty joined me for their summer training.
Now I had a team, I divided those interns into groups and defined their area of operations. Each group visited 2- 3 villages every day. I knew the hardness of work which those interns were going to perform for me. So I tried my level best to make the work as enjoyable as possible. The team used to have fun together every Saturday evening. Every Saturday was called as fun day; it was mandatory for everyone including me to attend the evening. On Saturday evening everyone had to take part in the activities which were conducted by those interns. I developed an open environment at my office, which I have experienced at my institute for the last one year. I eliminated the gaps between all my team members and me. All of us were equal hierarchically. I made them free to take leave but they had to inform me one day before. Every Monday, there was a meeting at office. In this meeting we all used to overview our approach and looked for the improvements. Because of the open culture and fun which used to have together, all these interns started responding to me with good ideas for improvements. It was a great experience working with those young and enthusiastic people. I learned many things from these guys. We all became good friends.
We started conducting village meetings in the villages. It was a very big task to get audience for the meeting in the villages. The farmers attend a lot of meetings in their villages conducted by govt. or by some private people. Some people came to villages and promised something and took some money from those farmers and the promise was not completed. So, farmers felt cheated about such incidents. They become very skeptical about the people who come to meet them. The first thing which comes to their mind is about those people who came and cheated them. They perceive all private people as they have come to take their advantage in one way or the other.
To add more people to my work, I met District Magistrate of Aligarh District as an NGO and asked him for help in my operations. He sent me to the Chief Development officer, this person heard me properly and sent me to the Deputy Director Agriculture, Aligarh District and he was the right person to help me. The Deputy Director issued a letter for the whole agriculture department in the district for helping me to the possible extent. I got the good support from the Agriculture department. Agriculture department is having one kisan mitra in every village; the agriculture department gave me the list of those kisan mitras. These kisan mitra’s were very helpful for me while visiting a new village and conducting village meetings. Now I had a person in every village for helping in my work. Whenever any of the group visited any village, group directly approached to the kisan mitra and surveyed the villages with kisan mitra and conducted village meetings. By the help of Deputy Director Agriculture, I got the support of Irrigation department. Whenever we conducted a meeting in any village, we had at least one official from each department. We had all govt. departments about which farmers are concerned. In some meetings, Deputy Director himself came which was very big thing for my operations. Now, we were conducting at least two meetings everyday in different villages.
Agriculture department conducts many fares at district, tahsil or block level. In every fare they invited me to address the farmers about the organic farming. In such fares, a huge crowd use to come to watch new technological agriculture equipments and other new valuable thing in the market. In every fare, a meeting was organized where govt. officials, invited scientists used deliver some information to the farmers. The agriculture department asked me to address farmers in every fare from the stage which is very high place for the crowd. People perceived me differently. Such fares gave me lot of support of farmers.
I went to the local newspapers and explained to them my work is a social work and I need your help. Initially some of the newspapers started publishing about my works but just within few days, news about every village meeting was in the almost all newspapers next morning. Local newspapers spread my word very fast. A news in a newspaper is much more effective against an advertisement, people perceived me differently. Very soon people started recognizing me and the name of my organization ‘SRISTI’.
Village meetings were the platform where direct interaction with farmers took place. Village meetings became my primary tool to get marketed. Before conducting a village meeting, I put sample of our products in the same village and conducted the meeting after the results of the sample. During giving samples, I kept in mind that the person using sample should be an opinion leader or at least not having bad image in the village, so during the meeting other farmers could believe him.
While conducting village meetings, I faced lot of problems. I never thought cast system in the village can impact or come in between in my work. But I was wrong; cast system became a big challenge for which I didn’t have any solution. Whenever we conducted a meeting in any village, people attending the meeting were from high cast or from the lower cast. If meeting is happening with high cast people low cast people didn’t come, they felt they will not be allowed by the high cast people and will not get proper attention in the meeting. If the meeting was in low cast farmers, none from the high cast came because they feel it against their status of being high cast. We conducted more than one meeting in such cases to make sure almost all farmers could attend the meetings. If the village is big: it was more difficult to get audience. In big villages politics is playing very significant role. People have got divided in groups, they follow groupism. They perceive other party people as their enemy. In a very big village, we were conducting a meeting. I knew about the strong politics of that village. So, we conducted the meeting at a place which was in between the lands of both dominant groups in that village to get all people as audience in the meeting. When meeting started, eight to ten youngsters with long and strong sticks came and stood at an end of that place so none from the other party can attend the party. I asked them not to do like that but none of them answered to me. Than an old person came and advised me to keep out of that matter. To resolve such problems, we conducted meetings twice in the village with both the groups.
After two months, all interns went back to their institutes as their training period ended. I was again alone. My classes at my institute were also just to start. Now, I attend my classes at institute 4 days in week and for rest three days I go back to my work land.

thats how I started with my work........................

Before around three four months, almost all of my classmates were going through the interviews for summer training in different organizations. But I had something else in mind; I was planning to optimize an opportunity which I got from Padamsri Prof. Anil K Gupta. During the final round of Srijan 09, I had some discussions with Prof. Anil Gupta. We discussed about some NGO’s which has been founded by him. During those discussions, I came to know that one of those NGO’s SRISTI is producing herbal agro products to promote organic farming, which has become major concern of many social organizations and the govt. We also discussed about the reach of these products to the farmers. I came to know that being an NGO, they were not putting efforts to market these products or the efforts were not adequate. I proposed few ideas to Prof. Gupta to market these products and he replied with a question, “Why don’t you market these products”. It seemed very interesting thing to me, but I had no answer for his question at that point in time but after few days, I asked Prof. Gupta for summer training on marketing and execution of SRISTI’s products. After few days he asked me to come to Ahmadabad, SRISTI’s main office after completion of the third term of my studies when the time for summer training started.
8th April 09, I reached SRISTI in Ahmadabad. On the same day I met Prof. Gupta, I was expecting an area where he will ask me to work on the execution of SRISTI’s product. But he had something different in his mind. He asked me for a business partnership with SRISTI. According to Prof. Gupta, I had to execute these products at the place which suits me best. For this work he asked me to prepare a plan with minimal budget, I stayed there for 4-5 days in Ahmadabad prepared the plan and went to Prof. with a plan how will I do.
With some refinement, Prof. Gupta and some other people from SRISTI got convinced with the plan. On that day, I was feeling very excited because I was going to work for me, work with Prof. Anil Gupta. SRISTI provided initial required funding for the operations. I started my work at my native place Aligarh.