For any fellow, the first visit to the project village is always filled with excitement and trepidation. Equipped with a basic framework regarding social development, a desire to create positive social change and an unknown excitement, fellows explored the region of their workspace, their ‘Karma Bhoomi.’ Being no different, as I stepped foot into the project village of Talur (in Ballari district, Karnataka), I was accosted by curious locals and was asked to introduce myself. No sooner did the “JSW” abbreviation come out of my mouth that I was bombarded with a unique set of questions centred around a single theme – What are you here to give us?
In the following 11 months, interactions with several stakeholders during my work in the agricultural domain– such as government officials, Panchayat members, farmers, and Farmer Producer Organization (FPO) CEOs – mandated a standard prepared answer for several variants of the same question. At the initial stage, I was constantly caught off guard by the severe insistence on satisfying the primary objectives of whichever stakeholder I interacted with. The expectation of meeting several such self-centred interests made me question my primary purpose. Was it to create a brand-new project aimed at social welfare or to satisfy the selfish interests of the several stakeholders?
No clarity in the primary purpose = no objective of my fellowship. And I cannot work without clarity. Hence, with a typical systematic approach, I began to strip the complex problems into their parts. This involved understanding the current situation of agricultural livelihoods in the Ballari region and the stakeholders’ responses, which then helps recognize the existing selfish interests and, hence, the reasoning for the current situation.
I began at the most obvious starting point – farmers. The local farmers mentioned that agriculture was reduced to becoming a secondary income earning activity due to
- alternative livelihoods,
- the lack of water availability in the arid region required to aid cultivation, and the
- uncertainty and lack of profitability in the agriculture activities due to high input costs. For instance, the search for water without any significant source implies farmers tap into groundwater resources through borewells, leading to high investment costs.
Farmers preferred to blame the governance system, existing industries and local Panchayat members. Yet, when asked to work towards reducing input costs through collective participation in the village FPO, the farmers insisted on their self-benefit, disregarding the notion of collective work. A lack of trust in the existing system implies that farmers insist on large-scale positive effects in very short time frames, following which they can aim to replicate the effect. The result is that despite having more than 200 members, the FPO barely constitutes members from the village in which it is based.
So, how does the administrative setup respond? Panchayat members elected from individual wards regularly meet with each other to discuss who is supposed to receive the intended benefits from the Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP). The allocation is primarily directed at infrastructure for sustainable energy usage for public facilities, such as solar lamps for the village roads. Schemes about agriculture are rarely availed due to a lack of incentivised agricultural practices. Irrigation structures are not utilised due to lack of water resources. Monocropping systems are followed to ensure that agricultural lands don’t remain uncultivated but incur losses due to mass cultivation of the same variety of crops. Farming is viewed as an individual enterprise in which the Panchayat cannot interfere in the crop choices. Hence, the factor remains uncoordinated.
The prevalent industrial ecosystem of the Ballari region implies that the relationship between industry owners, governments, and residents is a constant tug-of-war with expectations. When interacting with the JSW Foundation Location Head – who coordinates the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities of over ten industries under the JSW Umbrella, he mentioned several interventions as planned by the JSW Foundation over several domains. The interventions are expected to align with the objectives of the local and state governments and are to be implemented by partner organisations. These organisations face several operational difficulties due to the area’s inaccessibility. And considering that the initiatives exist as a support structure for governance ideas, they, too, are affected by the dynamic nature of the government’s policies.
However, lying within this myriad web of relationships is a set of possible solutions to the existing situations. The balance of resources being split evenly across multiple stakeholders means that subtle tweaks can ensure that all the concerned parties can be brought along towards a common objective. All it needs is someone to facilitate the existing flow of resources in a proper direction. And there lies the fellow’s purpose. Maybe it is just about aligning the several selfish interests towards a common selfless cause.
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