Global Research: 13-08-2024,
Harijanpur is a hamlet of about 140 households in Manikpur block of Chitrakut district (state of Uttar Pradesh). When some of the poorest people settled here about seven decades back, what helped them the most was a move initiated by the first woman Chief Minister in India Sucheta Kriplani to ensure that the poorest of the poor should also have some access to farmland. Even though this land was not considered very productive, it provided some essential base and food security to the people of this hamlet. Fortune smiled about two decades later when, making good use of the government’s Food for Work program, two voluntary organizations took up water conservation work. The irrigation from this tank has helped the people to meet their food needs in a reasonably assured way since then.
Image: Sucheta Kriplani (Source)
Gaya Prasad Gopal, an 85-year-old social activist who had played a crucial role in creating the tank in this village and at this age still insisted on accompanying me to this village on a hot afternoon, says—
“An extremely important lesson of my development experiences of about six decades has been that wherever we could secure some farmland for the rural poor, some secure base for food security could be created while those who remained landless also remained more vulnerable to hunger.”
There is increasing evidence that if properly used, even a small plot of just one or two acres of farmland can contribute a lot to the sustainable livelihood of a rural household.