In the tribal heartland of Banswara, four women have turned small family gardens into layered sources of nutrition, income and self-respect.
At the southern tip of Rajasthan, where the Mahi River curls around a landscape of hills, slopes and small fields known as Vagad, lies Banswara. According to the 2011 Census, about 76 per cent of the district's population belongs to Scheduled Tribes, the Bhil being the largest community, and most households live off the land. In Anandpuri block, four women have each found their own way of drawing a livelihood from this terrain: Kokila Devi Damor of Seranagla, Kuni Devi Pargi of Navagra, Chhagan Devi Patel of Bawdi and Laxmi Garasia of Ubapan.
Their stories differ, yet one thread runs through them all: the support of Vaagdhara, a Banswara-based organisation working with tribal communities; the strength of the Mahila Saksham women's groups; and the courage to turn their baadi, the family garden, into a source of income.
Wadi means a small orchard, but the programme is far more than a scheme for handing out fruit saplings. A fruit orchard sits at its heart, joined to soil conservation, water harvesting, community health, sanitation and women's empowerment. It is a family-centred model of farming, built around a holding of one or two bighas, agricultural biodiversity and the participation of women. A small farmer needs water and plants, training and organisation — and, above all, the belief that change is possible.
Kokila Devi: Farming And Animal Husbandry Walk Hand In Hand
Kokila Devi of Seranagla owns four bighas of land. Maize, paddy, wheat and gram kept the family fed, but left nothing for the children's schooling or for the days ahead. In 2018–19, Vaagdhara connected her with NABARD's Wadi project, and the direction of her thinking changed. She came to see that a farm's real capital lies not only in its land but in its diversity.
Her goats are the loveliest proof. A single goat from the HIPPER project has grown into a herd of twelve. Their manure returns to the field and restores the soil, and last year the sale of four Sirohi bucks brought in ₹70,000. Animal gives manure, manure gives crop, and crop returns as fodder for the animal — here, farming and animal husbandry walk hand in hand.
The story of her nutrition garden is even more absorbing. She once grew only field beans and brinjal. After joining a Mahila Saksham group and receiving training, her beds now hold seven or eight kinds of vegetables. Vines such as bitter gourd climb overhead while fenugreek, red spinach and amaranth carpet the ground below. Ginger, turmeric, tomato and brinjal earned her ₹40,000 last year. To protect the garden through the summer she built a water tank and put up fencing, and once the field bunds were raised, rainwater began to sink into the soil right where it fell.
Economists call this diversification of risk: if one crop fails, another holds the family up. Kokila Devi now draws from five or six sources of income.
Kuni Devi: Filled The Plate First, Then The Pocket
For Kuni Devi of Navagra, the question was a different one. She has seven bighas of rain-fed land, three buffaloes, two cows, five goats and a family of seven. Her worry went beyond income: rising costs were swallowing her profits. At the monthly meetings of the Mahila Saksham group she learned how to harvest more at lower cost, and the seed kit from the Vaagdhara-formed group did the rest. In her 1,010-square-foot baadi, tomato, brinjal, ridge gourd, sponge gourd, round gourd, chilli, cluster beans, bottle gourd, spinach, fenugreek, coriander and onion flourished. Between March and June 2025, this garden alone earned ₹40,000.
About 2,000 kilograms of cow-dung manure — roughly two trolley-loads — produced three quintals of onions. She kept 50 kilograms for the home and sold the remaining 250 kilograms at ₹25 a kilo, earning ₹6,250. Fifteen kilograms of lemons brought in another ₹1,500, and nine kilograms of ghee made from her buffalo milk added ₹9,000 more.
Kuni Devi puts it simply: the baadi's first duty is to fill the family's plate, and its second is to earn.
Chhagan Devi: The Power Of The Group, The Mark Of Self-respect
At the centre of Chhagan Devi's story, from Bawdi village, is the collective platform that made everything possible. This tribal farmer owns eight bighas of land and had already used her savings to sink a borewell for irrigation. Her family includes her husband and three daughters, along with buffaloes, bullocks, cows and goats.
The real turning point came in 2018, when Vaagdhara formed the "Mataji Saksham Samooh". Conversation in this group goes well beyond savings. Each month the members discuss the role of women in Panchayati Raj, information on government schemes, and the organisation's three guiding principles: Sachchi Kheti (true farming), Sachcha Bachpan (true childhood) and Sachcha Swaraj (true self-rule). Facilitators taught them to make vermicompost and dashaparni ark, a botanical pest repellent. Under the Wadi project, every member received forty fruit plants — twenty mango, fifteen guava and five lemon — together with a water tank, a vermi bed and equipment for preparing plant-based remedies.
The results show up directly in the household accounts. From the kharif season of June 2023 to March 2024, she sold ₹25,000 worth of vegetables. For eight months she did not have to buy a single vegetable from the market, saving nearly ₹10,000 — a rupee not spent is a rupee earned. Of thirty kilograms of red chilli, twenty were sold at ₹280 a kilo for ₹5,600, while fifty kilograms of onions met the family's needs for the entire year.
Chhagan Devi says her dependence on the market has fallen, and that along with her basic rights she has gained an identity. That self-respect is what gives her the courage to speak up in the panchayat and ask for the schemes that are rightfully hers.
Laxmi: Taming The Slope, Growing Income With A Nursery And A Flour Mill
Laxmi Garasia's tale from Ubapan begins with the shape of the land. Much of her seven-bigha farm lies on a slope, where rain washes the soil away and crops struggle to hold. It is a common problem in hill country, and no single farmer can solve it alone. Laxmi chose the government route: through village-level groups she applied for land levelling, the field team helped her fill in the application, the matter was discussed in the panchayat, and last year the work was completed under MGNREGA.
Then a nursery took shape on one part of the field, where seedlings of chilli, tomato and brinjal are raised every year and sold in the kharif season. This year she also raised jamun, bamboo and custard apple saplings. A nursery is a shrewd choice for a small farmer, since it needs little land and a lot of skill, and those who transplant their crops find the seedlings right in the village. A flour mill, bought with her savings, gave her enterprise a new dimension. Neighbouring villages no longer have to travel to the block for milling, and Laxmi's income has risen for good. She is also raising awareness among other women in her village, and her family stands beside her.
The Bond Between Nutrition And Income
These women did not leave their income at the mercy of a single crop, season or source. A goat here, a nursery there — when many layers rise on a small plot of land, the real story that emerges is the bond between nutrition and income. Conventional thinking treats nutrition as a matter for the health department and livelihood as one for agriculture, but the baadi joins the two. The vegetable that reaches the plate becomes nutrition; the one that reaches the market becomes income. And the decision about what is cooked stays in a woman's hands.
In none of these four stories is a woman alone. Saksham groups, facilitators, agricultural experts and village-level committees together form a system that threads training, resources and government schemes onto a single string. For a lone farmer, reaching seeds, tanks, fencing and MGNREGA is hard; with a group, the road grows easier. Local resources such as cow-dung manure, vermicompost and dashaparni are the backbone of low-cost farming.
When Kuni Devi sells her home-made ghee, Kokila Devi her bucks, Laxmi her seedlings and Chhagan Devi her chillies, they are not selling mere produce. They are declaring that the tribal woman is no longer just a beneficiary of schemes but an agent of change. This is true self-reliance, and a step towards the genuine swaraj that the soil of this region has dreamed of for years.
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*Contact: vikasmeshram04@gmail.com
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