Village Bhandgaon
Bhandgaon, located 60 kilometers southeast of Pune, is a village of approximately 5000 people, give or take a few thousand. Everyone in the village seems to have a different population count, since there are a lot of recent “immigrants” in the town. Many people have recently moved in from around the country to work at fast-growing companies nearby such as Tasty Bite, Praveen Masala and Parekh Foods.
The town has a gram panchayat with 9 members and has recently built a fancy new gram panchayat building. There is one school, which is a state board Marathi Medium school from kindergarten to 10th standard. The school has also recently started an English Medium program, which so far has kindergarten and 1st standard students. By World Bank standards and certainly by what is visible, village residents are mostly well above the poverty line. Most households are dual income with most heads of households either working in factories or on farms. I would estimate that average household income is Rs 6000 to Rs 7000 per month. This translates to about $5 per day (well above the World Bank poverty threshold of $1.25 per day) and is certainly sufficient income for basic housing and proper nutrition. As expected, the town lacks much basic infrastructure. Virtually every home has a television, but there is not a single internet connection in the village. The school seems to have dedicated teachers, but has no computers or science lab. The village only gets 12 hours of power per day and has no hospital. As I toured the village, I met several of the gram panchayat members and a few school teachers and administrators. In conversations, they all seemed quite open to new ways of looking at upgrading the school. The other encouraging fact is that virtually all parents in the village are ensuring their kids attend school. This is not only true for the residents of Bhandgaon, but is true for farm and factory labor across the region, and from what I have been hearing, all across the country. With India on the global map, people seem to know that the path to success is through education. The drop out rates are still high, particularly in secondary school, and school infrastructure is dismal, but this one social hurdle seems to have been largely overcome in less than a generation, which provides a lot of hope.
The nearest hospital is Dr. Kularni’s hospital in Yavat, which is about 3 kilometers away. Yavat also has a government clinic, but no government hospital (one is currently being built, but will probably take a few years to finish). Dr. Kulkarni is a wise and experienced physician. His hospital is located near the Solapur highway, so after meeting him, my first question related to highway accidents. Little did I realize that he would reply by informing me that he had just lost his younger son in an accident on the highway just 15 days prior. Despite this tragedy, he was composed and so incredibly warm to me. That is when I realized why, despite the infrastructural bottlenecks and hassles, I still feel so energetic in India. It’s because the people, despite their struggles, are perennially showering you with love and blessings, and somehow that keeps you charged. He told me that they get about 20 to 25 traffic accident cases per month, which come from a few kilometers radius of the hospital. Dr. Kularni’s hospital has 22 beds, a simple trauma room, delivery room and operating room. They do not provide cardiac or neurology care and have a small ambulance with oxygen and intravenous support. The ambulance is not equipped with a ventilator or defibrillator, which are crucial life support elements, particularly if patients need to be taken to Pune for emergency care.
The area around Bhandgaon is abundant with small and large farmers, virtually all of which grow sugarcane along with a few other vegetables such as tomatoes, chili, toor dal, onions, and spinach. Most of the farmers are shareholders in one of the nearby sugar processing units. I had a chance to visit four farms and also engage in a discussion with another 10 farmers in one of the nearby farmers’ homes. I went with the simple intention of learning and hearing about their lives and the day-to-day issues they face. We spoke about the benefits of organic farming, non-pesticide management, contract farming and education. Through our discussions, I learned that they are all trying to reduce their use of pesticides, as they have started to deplete soil nutrition and health problems are showing up in their families. However, non-pesticide pest control options are limited.
A few months ago, while visiting Andhra Pradesh, I met with an organization called the Center for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA). CSA was set up with the intention of researching and deploying age-old organic techniques in the state. Pesticide usage in Andhra Pradesh had gotten so out of hand, that international customers were threatening bans on agricultural imports, particularly in the case of red chili. One formulation that CSA researched was called Panchagavya, which is a concoction of cow manure, cow urine, ghee, milk, and yoghurt. In field tests, it was established that this concoction kept pests away, improved yields and cost less than conventional pesticides. Moreover, the red chili became more pungent. In under three years, by 2009, over one million acres of chili was under cultivation in the state with no pesticide usage.
I asked the farmers if they had tried this formulation on their farms. One progressive farmer said he had tried it on one acre of his land, and had impressive results, but that supply was limited. He said that most of the dairies in the area had British-origin Jersey cows as they yield more milk than Indian ‘Desi’ cows. However, you need Indian Desi cow manure for the formulation to work on the soil! I then proceeded to ask all the farmers that if someone set up a business selling this formulation with desi cow manure, as to whether they would pay a premium for it, and all of them unanimously said yes. After this interaction, I began to suspect that like this, there are likely to be numerous consumer need-gaps in rural areas. With the right environment and tools to incubate businesses, local entrepreneurship can thrive (see Deshpande Foundation and Center for Social Entrepreneurship) and ultimately provide the economic support required for schools, hospitals, electricity and roads.
