E1 - Empowerment - Jan Sanghatan

There is a great need to organize the rural masses, especially the extinct community like refugees, to mainstream them with local communities.

With this objective Janakalyan started (Women Development & Empowerment Program) promoting SHGs of women and also men in the year 1997. Janakalyan has rich experience in formation as well as training on the concept of Self-Help Group. It has its own innovative model of SHG and more than 1000 members (both women and men) have been brought under the umbrella of SHGs in two District of Karnataka under this program. It has also formed the Cluster Level Federation of SHGs, which was made independent after 3 years of nurturing. Janakalyan was the member (NGO nominee) of Swarnajayanthi Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) District Co-ordination Committee chaired by the CEO, Zilla Panchayat, Raichur. It has a trained & experienced team in this field which is again the strength of the organization. It is now in the 12th year of its field experience. All other programs of Janakalyan are channeled through these institutions. Janakalyan is also member of PlanetFinance micro credit forum at the Global level.

GNAN is an initiative of Janakalyan to make the SHG intervention sustainable. GNAN (Garibi Nirmoolan Avartan Nidhi) being the umbrella organization for all these SHGs, satisfies the credit requirements of all the members and also intervene in the social sectors to take care of issues concerning women and their children. 

E2 - Employment - Jan Krishi

Problem Analysis: The central & major cause of prevailing poverty in Indian villages is agriculture becoming loss-making enterprise. Land is the only source of income and it needs to be preserved for the future generations too. All tail ends of irrigation projects are exposed to a peculiar problem i.e. two extremes of water availability. During rainy season, when the upper reach farmers don’t want water for irrigation and also the runoff gets generated out of excess rain, they leave it through the canal which inundates the standing crops of tail end farmers. In the peak season, when the water is seriously in need by the tail end farmers, it is being completely used by the upper reach farmers leaving inadequate quantum after satisfying their needs, thereby causing drying up of standing crops again at the tail end. 

Secondly, chemical-heavy agriculture caused pests immunization and has left degraded soil with salinity & alkalinity issues for the farmers. Under this circumstance, whatever is grown by the farmers faces least value in the market.

Can pukur be an alternative? If a farm-pond (Pukur in Bengali) is constructed to store surplus water, which inundates cropped-land in rainy season & is otherwise a waste, may be applied for Life-saving irrigation in peak season to avoid both the losses stated earlier.

Intensified Integrated Farming System (IIFS) – an answer: But then question came into our mind whether such a Pukur can irrigate all the five acres of land? Our experience is that the whole farm (4-5 Acres) can not be irrigated in the peak season, if planted with agricultural crops.  What could the way be out was the next question and the answer to the same is finally got from the experiment is as under-

Out of 5 acres of land, that the farmer is having,

Excavate a multipurpose Pukur for fisheries, duck rearing and use bund for tree crops  ¾ acre

Grow subsistence crop like paddy with SRI method to meet the food requirement    1 acre

Grow dry crops for family consumption such as food grain, cereals and pulses          1 acre

Establish orchard with horticulture crops & vegetables which requires less irrigation    ½ acre

Grow fodder for Ccows which will give manure for soil                                                                                                                                            health improvement                                                                                                                     ¼ acre

Adopt dry land agriculture crops to avoid fallow land and make effective use of land                                                                                                                                            Rest

Organic Agriculture: Degradation of soil is the result of over-dozes of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation water and need to be checked at the earliest to reduce national wastes. The farmers need to be educated about appropriate method of cultivation preferably organically, which may assist them to reclaim and retain fertility of soil with optimum yield; thus Janakalyan has developed Total Recycling Model to address these issues.

Responding to these issues and also to leave the land in good condition for future generations, Janakalyan started Participatory Technology Development in Agriculture (PTDA) to promote organic farming for soil health management. Farmers’ Field School (FFS) is another tool used to demonstrate Integrated Pest Management which is for soil & water conservation through Intensified Integrated Farming Systems (IIFS). 

Poverty Alleviation Package for Refugees: PAPR is another approach whereby attempt has been made to develop a habit of integrated farming inclusive of horticulture, fisheries, dairy, vegetables growing, fodder cultivation, dry land agriculture and subsistence crops, etc. Here emphasis has been given on judicious utilization of the water. Thus, basically this intervention is trying to address the twin problems of livelihood of these refugees i.e. optimizing profit in agriculture (soil fertility, salinity / alkalinity, pest immunization, chemical heavy cultivation practices, etc.) and providing adequate irrigation.

System of Rice Intensification (SRI): Janakalyan has mastered the concept of SRI through field experiments and extension activities. SRI is not used only as a tool to enhance productivity of the land but also as a water-saving method and thereby increasing the area under irrigation. 

Strengths: Agriculture is an area of expertise of Janakalyan; it has a set of qualified & trained personnel to innovate technologies for cultivation of various crops with Low External Inputs Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) concept through Participatory Technology Development in Agriculture (PTDA) approach. It has involved in the FAO supported Farmers Field School (FFS) and successfully completed its implementation.

Sri L Narayana Reddy, a renowned progressive farmer and promoter of SRI in Karnataka visits Janakalyan every fortnight to provide on-farm technical support to the farmers. Sri Subhash Palekar,Father of Zero Cultivation, has also visited the organic farming experiments of Janakalyan and congratulated the team about the success it has achieved in natural farming. 

E3 - Environment - Jan Jal

Acute shortage of drinking water exists in most of the villages in India but could anybody have seen rationing of water @ 1 pot for two persons per day? Janakalyan had to initiate a process of rationing of water from the community pond using printed coupons during the summer, when irrigation canal runs dry.

To mitigate this severe drought in this part of the country, Janakalyan introduced Rooftop Water Harvesting Program (RWHP). This addresses the acute drinking water problem of the communities in the summer months and also supplies green vegetables through kitchen gardening using the surplus water.

Acute drinking water problem exists in the operational area of Janakalyan. The area is located at the tail end of Tungabhadra Irrigation Project and hence receives inadequate water. The ground water is brackish. It is also identified as the drought prone area and the drought is experienced once in every two years. The community blames the Administration or the Government for the shortage of water. Janakalyan found that the water is available at their doorstep and even then they are simply blaming the administration. The normal annual average rainfall of the area is about 581.7mm. The roof surface of each household is about 15’x25’, which yields about 17000 liters of water at the annual average rainfall. Thus this project is designed.

JSYS: Karnataka Community Based Tank Management Program (KCBTMP) is a World Bank assisted program through Jala Samvardhane Yojana Sangha (JSYS). Janakalyan is implementing it in the Deodurga taluk of Raichur district to improve the ground water condition as well as provide the surface water for irrigation to the farming communities.

E4 - Education - Jan Shiksha

Child Labor Elimination Program (CLEP) to eradicate the Child Labor issue from the area and provide free & compulsory education to all the children below the age of 14 years.

Education is the backbone of the Society- Janakalyan believes. It runs regular Schools for the education of poor people, who cannot afford their children’s education in the nearby cities. Despite the availability of the Schools, the parents send their children to fields to EARN instead of Schools to LEARN. To this serious and hazardous issue, Janakalyan responded by opening special Schools for Child Labors, which is in the third year of experiment. Janakalyan has now realized the seriousness of the issue and has planned a full-fledged program to eliminate the issue from the area with multi-pronged activities. It is a Ministry of Labor supported program.

E5 - Entrepreneurship - Jan Udyog

Rural Entrepreneurship Development Program (REDP) is a program targeted to the educated rural unemployed youths of India. It identifies the potential entrepreneurs and develops their skills and entrepreneurial qualities in them.  Finally they set up their own ventures for self-employment.   It creates job creators and not job seekers.

E6 - Energy - Jan Shakti

The burden on ecology is increasing day by day, especially because of the rural communities using the fuel wood for cooking. 

Renewable Sources of Energy Harnessing (RSEH) is a program which aims at harnessing the renewable energy sources like solar, biogas, etc. It also reduces the burden on ecology by introducing the improved Chullah, solar cooker and Solar Drier for the rural communities.

E7 - Ensuring Health - Jan Raksha

In this age of competitive world, a family cannot meet all its requirements from a sole occupation like agriculture which is almost a loss-making enterprise at the present context. A farmer also has all those requirements that of a city-dweller, especially in regards to the education of their children. Land does not provide an opportunity to these farmers, if the holding is less than 5 acres without adequate irrigation facility. It is in this context, Janakalyan felt the need to provide subsidiary sources of income generation to the peasant communities which are complementary to agriculture and easy to manage without many technicalities.

Dairy is considered as a viable Income Generation Activity (IGA) for the area and also suggested by Technical Constancy Service Organization of Karnataka (TECSOK), Bangalore. Dairy Development & Cattle Breed Improvement Program (DDCBIP) is conceptualized to develop a climate resistant breed for the peasant communities. Individual as well as group enterprises are promoted through SHGs mobilizing credit (worth Rs.50,00,000) from Banks and schemes of Government of India such as SGSY.

It is then felt that without proper backward and forward linkages, no enterprise can become successful and thus designed the following initiatives for the peasant communities-

1. Arranged credit from various financial institutions for purchase of cows and buffaloes.
2. Promoted Milk Producers Cooperative Societies in each village and established milk route for collection of milk from the producers.
3. Set up Artificial Insemination and Veterinary Medical Services in the villages by recruiting qualified veterinary doctors.

Based on its learning from these interventions Janakalyan has developed a model to make the intervention successful under SGSY (Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana) of Government of India.