Our basic mantra is to work towards making government programmes reach effectively to the intended people: Ashwini Kulkarni of Pragati Abhiyan

I have been in this field for more than three decades. And after working for 10-15 years or maybe more than that I realised is that most CSOs like ours, like NGOs, get funds from somebody and then we go and work on developmental programmes in a particular village. But then I realised that there is an inherent limitation because it is all limited by the funds you can get. At the same time, if you really see, development is the mandate of the government. So, in 2006, I with some of my friends set up Pragati Abhiyan with the approach that we will work towards making government programmes reach effectively to the people these are intended for. That’s been the basic mantra for us.

I also understand that you work with ClimateRISE Alliance, which fosters multi-stakeholder approach on intersectional climate action. How does it really help you? 

ClimateRISE came into Pragati Abhiyan’s life journey at a very important time. We have worked on finger millet, we have worked on soil and water conservation and we have worked on natural resource management, but to understand all this in the context of the challenges that we have because of the weather variability or the heat waves or the rainfall extremes is important. How do we understand this in the context of what we are doing? So, that is where ClimateRise came in and helped us to discuss with other similar kind of organisations which are working not just in Maharashtra, but across India and also helped us articulate and amplify our own work. So, in that sense, ClimateRISE has been very, very supportive. 

What will be your recommendation for all stakeholders to enable climate resilient farming? 

We should look who all are in the ecosystem as stakeholders. It is obviously the research institutions, whether it is private or public, and organisations like ours who are trying some innovative models and that is all that we can do. Scaling up is again with the government and then the bureaucracy, of course, not just the policies but also the delivery system, I mean, and then students.

So, what can we do with the students who are in their graduation or before that?  They I think are an important stakeholder but most important are the policymakers and by policymakers I mean the legislature as well as the bureaucracy. They both have to really put their minds together, maybe have some consultations with organisations like ours which have worked across India in a very big way and in a very deep way, intensively. They have the data also. Farmer level data is available with so many organisations. Can we pull together and understand and see if we can come up with some good policy framework for both the resource poor farmers and for fighting climate change? We need to think about these two.

If you were to sum up, what would be your wish list to improve the lot of marginal farmers? 

First and foremost, I will say watershed. For each village, each farm, whatever the typology, it has to be done. Whatever the investment required, there is no alternative to that. Second, I would say, increase the water storage in each of the places.

So, watershed and water storage structures are point number one. Point two is create infrastructure like protective irrigation. Right now the livestock and all these agriculture and allied activities have set schemes. They need to be made flexible.

And the third point is not to look at agriculture and allied activities in silos.

So, let us not talk about a crop and a plot of land, but let’s talk about landscape productivity. So, that way we understand how collectively it impacts the livestock or agroforestry or forests like non-forest products produced. So, all these are so interconnected that if we look at landscape, it probably will be a more efficient way of understanding and that approach will also give us the research questions that are required to make us more resource rich.