By IANS
Thiruvaiyaru (Tamil Nadu) : The power of technology was on display at the 95th National Science Congress in Vishakhapatnam Saturday when satellite links helped women from across India voice their demand for new policies to promote women farmers.
Women from seven village resource centres (VRCs) – Chennai and Thiruvaiyaru in Tamil Nadu, Jeypore in Orissa, Moosapet in Andhra Pradesh, Pokharan in Rajasthan, and Wifad and Yavatmal in Maharashtra’s drought-hit Vidharbha district that is known for its farmer suicides – expressed the need for feminisation of Indian agriculture to hundreds of scientists and policy makers.
The M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai has set up 300 satellite-based VRCs in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). All the centres were listening in on the interaction at the science congress although only seven VRCs participated actively.
Loans and farm credit cards topped the agenda of the session which M.S. Swaminathan, adviser to the government on food security, began by saying that “as much as 70 percent of the agricultural activity in India is done by women”.
Woman and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury, MP Mabel Rebello, and R.K. Singh from the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences were among those who listened to the demands of Dhanarekha from Thiruvaiyaru in Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur district, about 500 km from state capital Chennai.
Dhanarekha asked for financial and economic reforms that would enable women to have land ownership while Premlatha from the same VRC wanted modified agricultural implements since she felt the ones in use are “primarily designed for men”.
Narmadamma, from the Moosapet VRC, said that electricity to run water pumps in the fields was available only at night. Since it is unsafe for women to work in the fields at night, she asked that power be provided during daylight hours.
The women from Jeypore said as many as 70 percent of the tribal women in the region were engaged in farm activity. They voiced the need for quality seeds, seed banks and water harvesting technology so that they can grow two crops a year.
Vidrbha’s women, many of them widows and heading families relying on agriculture for a livelihood, said their crops are “regularly attacked by wild boars”, while the women of Pokharan spoke about abandoned cattle that raid their farms.
Crop insurance during calamities, both natural and man-made, was a prime concern of all the women who participated in the videoconference – the first national virtual congress of women farmers.
Renuka Chowdhury said crop insurance should be given at the village level and not the block level because crop and farm patterns varied at the grassroots and were not in accordance to larger land units.
Kavitha, from MSSRF, said she had done a study on how agriculture universities across India have ignored gender necessities in their curriculum and were men-oriented. Her call was to make the post of a gender specialist mandatory in every agriculture university and in government rural extension programmes.
Calling for a radical perception change in India’s agriculture policy, delegates at the congress sought the “en-gendering of the curriculum” so that gender concerns can be mainstreamed in the draft for the new farm policy in the offing.
Chowdhury added that she would push for “healthcare, nutrition and support services for women and children through the VRCs”.
ISRO officials have promised to establish 4,000 VRCs across the country in the next two years.
The various concerns expressed by the women will be drafted into a charter and presented to the government by the MSSRF for inclusion in the draft agriculture policy.
“What we have heard today should become a policy and not remain on paper. We pledge to resolve your problems,” Chowdhury told the women farmers.