I started the preparation of Shodhyatra before around one month. I was organizing this event create awareness about organic farming in the village so my prior aim was to get more and more people to interact with in the villages. I got the support of agriculture dept. We filled almost all the walls in almost all the villages with the posters conveying the massages of Shodhyatra. Before Shodhyatra in every villages, we arranged meetings in all villages with farmers and more importantly we took all the opinion leaders in our support before the Shodhyatra and their support became very good tool to get large number of audiences in the village meetings during the Shodhyatra. Before Shodhyatra we gave samples of organic agro products to some farmers to use on their crops and these farmers were supposed to present in the respective meetings in their villages during shodhyatra. It was really hard for me to manage studies during this time; I attend my college for 4 days in a week and come back to my work for rest of the week. I put my all efforts to make this event successful.
After a rigor of around one month, we were ready to organize the Shodhaytra on its scheduled time 29-30th Aug. 09. It was a two days program in which we had to cover 10 villages. We had to start the event early in the morning so we decided to reach the starting point one day before. In the evening of 28th August 09 almost all the people who were going to join Shodhyatra reached Madrak (The Starting point). We planned to stay for night in that village so we could get in touch with more farmers during the night. This village is situated on a high way which connects two big cities and Aligarh City is not much far from this village. This village is having very good connectivity with the other places. In this village, a meeting with farmers was scheduled at 7:30 AM, It was a starting point and we expected a large number of farmers to attend the meeting but we could get very less number of farmers in the meeting. I was also expecting media people at this spot as I informed almost all the media person in the area about the event. None of the media person reached on time, I had disappointment for their delay. The perception of this village meeting was much below the expectations. I am sure all the people in this village were aware of the event, all the farmers knew that the event is related to agriculture even after that we got very less number of audience in that village which has population more than 4000. Somehow, we could interact around 300 students of different schools. I was thinking about the reasons for low response from the people, was it time we had this meeting at 7:30 AM or it was something else.
At around 9:00 AM, Shodhyatra left Madrak and left towards the next point Nagla Pooran which is around 1 KM away from the first point. This village is comparatively much smaller than the first one even than we got large number farmers as our audiences in comparison to Madrak.
At around 11:30 AM, Shodhyatra reached a village called Nhoti, in this village we got some herbal practitioners who heel the people by the use of natural resources. In this village, I was expecting a good number of people to attend our meeting and we got fairly good number of audiences in this meeting. After it Day 1 of shodhyatra was according to our expectations, after Nhoti Shodhyatra covered Keeratpur and Mainath. In both these villages we got fairly good response from the people. After Mainath, Shodhyatra approached towards a school where we planned for night stay. This school is not in any village but is near to two villages. People in both these villages were known about the night stay of Shodhyatra in this school. We stayed in this school, so we could meet the people from those two villages. People in both these villages were very much interested in coming to that place for a night meet. We also arranged a musical program for the evening where few Lokgeet were presented. But all our planning got failed because of heavy rain in the evening; this rain started at around 7:00 PM and didn’t stop till mid night, so no people from any of the villages could reach us.
Second day Shodhyatra reached Manoharpur, it was around 7:45 AM. When we reached at the venue of meeting in this village there were hardly 10-15 people but within just 10 minutes, more than 400 people were there. Hundreds of women, hundreds of children and hundreds of farmers were there to meet us. After getting this kind of response from a comparatively small village I thought if early time was the reason for low response from people in Madrak than how have we got this huge crowd in this village. But I realized that mobility in this village in much less against Madrak. This village is in very much interior, no public transport is available to this place.
After a great response in Manoharpur, Shodhyatra proceeded towards Bhakraula. In this village we got some very good herbal practitioners. In the second day of Shodhyatra, we covered three more villages Dolra, Khadia and Badhauli.
In this Shodhyatra we met around 3000 people and shared our ideology with them. We encouraged farmers towards organic farming. My teams are still in touch with all villages and will be there to provide support to farmers for organic farming.
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