Lalpur- Story of creating robust livelihood by utilising CIF for Solar LI

Lalpur- Story of creating robust livelihood by utilising CIF for Solar LI 

The homestead land covered with vegetable cultivation together with Rai. Five outlets dispensing the elixir in the form of water by using solar energy to cover the homestead land of 32 HH of a hamlet and almost all the families indulged in income generating activities covering around 10 acres of land under this and especially cultivating vegetables like cauliflower, tomato, green leafy vegetables and cowpea with improved techniques. The people in the hamlet are aiming to earn around 25 to 30 thousand of  additional income and have dreams to fulfil  and to improve their livelihood. 

Vegetable cultivation @ village Lalpur

The scenario was not the same last year inspite of a river flowing nearby, the people of the village couldn’t grow and earn enough owing to lack of irrigation facility in their fertile homestead land. Agriculture used to be a vocation of getting food sufficiency for the people of the area. Lalpur is a village situated in the Amarpur block of Dindori district and is predominantly a tribal village and dependent basically on agrarian economy. In their homestead land they used to grow maize in Kharif and Rai in Rabi season making them earn very little or just for food sufficiency.

The women of the hamlet together formed SHG and during one of the meetings at hamlet level they discussed about this problem and thought to do something about improving their livelihood and the solution came in the form of utilising the existing resources i.e. their land to earn and hence they together with the PRADAN professional thought to go for improved vegetable cultivation in their homestead (Baadi) land. 

Idea:- Unleashing the irrigation potential of surface water by lifting it through solar pump to the farmers field to increase the productivity and thereby income.

Strategy and processes: - The undulating terrain and uneven and erratic rainfall makes the landscape very difficult for agriculture and to add to the burden there are rivers and rivulets in the area but no or poor water lifting mechanism seldom helps the farmer to increase the yield. However, rivers as water source are perennial. This provides a scope for the farmers to utilize the flowing elixir for their field. As of now the farmers do not have access to this flowing water and with this intervention they can not only create the mechanism to use this water to the fields and create a living for their unused land.     

Owing to costly diesel pumps and hefty prices of diesel the small and marginal farmers are unable to buy or rent a pump. Farmer’s limited technical understanding of it is also an important factor, which sometimes either increases the burden of extra cost at farmer’s end or impacts the irrigation system efficiency because of wrong selection of pump.

Looking into all the above it is desired to devise ways to utilize alternative source of energy than diesel for this intervention and hence the idea of “Community managed Solar Lift irrigation system” came to surface.

Installation and preparation:-

As the idea was generated and it was time to flourish it. Initially rounds of meetings were held to understand the Feasibility, Cost of installation and place where it is to be installed.  

Installation of LI @ village Lalpur

There was one huge problem and that was of the cost involved in it. It was decided that half of the total cost would be arranged by PRADAN and its partners and other half has to be arranged by community themselves. So they found an interesting solution to divide the cost incurred as per the ratio of land used for irrigation, in this way per decimal cost of land for irrigation was chalked out and it came out to be around 3.86 Lakh in total for them. As the members were the part of SHG in the village and they used to sit regularly, they thought to take loan from the CIF present in their VO. Some part of this has been contributed by them through labor and the other half by taking loans from the available money through their CIF provided by MPSRLM to their VO’s. 

After this the earth work in digging trenches has been done as a contribution by the community and after that installation of the whole set up was done. 

Activities-

The activities currently done are as follows:

1. Organizing Users’ Groups for creation of irrigation system will be the first step. These User Groups will be the recipient of the funds they will be involved in implementation of the scheme. They will also formulate systems for rent collection. The users’ groups will also train their members (with support) for improved agriculture and also linking them with market for both inputs and outputs.
2. Surveying and installation of the micro lift irrigation system: PRADAN along with other organisations as a techno-social partner will help the tribal farmers to survey, design, and install the community managed micro lift irrigation system. 
3. Training on improved agriculture- For improving crop productivity capacity building of farmers will be done. For 100-150 of such farmers a CSP (Community Service Provider) will be groomed for providing on field support to the farmers.
4. Linkage with market- Along with CSP few AEs (Agriculture Entrepreneur) will be groomed to support back and forth linkages to the farmers.

Impact/Outcome/Output -

Impact	Outcome	Output
Enhanced farm production of farmers	Enhanced knowledge and skill of women participated in this project	Creating community based lift irrigation, enhanced productivity both in kharif and Rabi season in 10 acres.
	Formation and strengthen water user groups and setting discipline in it.	Provide exposure and training to 32 HH to enhance their crop production and ensure their food security and cash income
	Enhanced capacity of CSP

Some of the important facts  to be considered are as follows:-

Solar based LI at Lalpur at a glance
Cost of installation	INR 8.35 Lakhs (approximately 800 per decimal of which community paid around 365 per decimal of area irrigated as one time investment)
Contribution by community members	INR 3.86 Lakhs
Amount taken as loan from CIF	INR 2.2 Lakhs
Increase in area of irrigation	10.515 Acres
Number of Households benefitted	32
Head and Distance covered by the 7.5 HP pump	23 m and 500 m respectively
Cost of installation per year per decimal (taking average life of LI to be 10 years)	Around INR 80 of which community contribution is approximately INR 37

One of the most important drivers of this decision for the villagers have been the support and availability of community investment fund provided by the MPSRLM to the VO’s without which it would have been difficult to arrange for the money that they required as loan, this has led them to dream and fulfil the desire to have a robust livelihood and take a step forward to creation of a robust system of generating livelihood for them. 

The next steps that they are aiming is to repay the amount of loan within a year and establish a system of collective agriculture and marketing so that they can gain the collective bargaining power to get the good market price of their produce. This model can serve as a good model to be replicated across the district for utilisation of surface water for improving income and utilisation of fund present in the village as CIF for the community.