Empowering Tribal Women to Safeguard the Forest

Anita's Story

The women of the Jai Santoshi Maa self-help group all live nearby. They wanted to do something together for themselves as well as the forest. Through Samerth Charitable Trust, one of the partner organizations, the women began by selling minor forest produce (sal seeds, harra). They soon turned to uptrading from other villages and dealing to local markets. In 2023, the group of 12 women made their largest profit ever, totaling some Rs 9,000 (around $107) each. “We sold the seeds direct at a higher rate than the middleman used to buy them from us,” Anita recounts. “From what we earned, I bought gold.”

The initiative taken through Samerth to empower women in forest-related activities has led this group to initiate conversations around broader issues plaguing the forests. And this story has repeated itself elsewhere: In another nearby village, Kabripathra, CHiRP’s activities have led to an increase in women’s agency and the forest’s health around them.

Women of the Baiga community living in Kabripathra have long held a symbiotic relationship with the surrounding forest and now are the biggest drivers of its conservation. The Jai Baba self-help group run by Baiga women in the village, for example, has decided to take financial stability into their own hands. As village access is limited, there aren’t many options to procure saplings, so the group launched its own nursery.

In this idyllic sal-covered village settled on gently sloping plateau land in the Maikala Hills, Bhukin Bai, a woman in her early twenties, tends to the potting of new saplings in the nursery. The nursery is a patch of land in a school yard that has been converted into a vegetable garden with a new greenhouse created with green tarpaulin. Sporting silver jewelry and bindi-like forehead tattoos typical to the Baiga tribe, Bai is accompanied by Phool Bai and Brihaspatin Bai, two elderly women who are also part of the group.

Brihaspatin Bai, a family matriarch, says she has always believed in innovation. “We went to Raipur [the nearest city] for the first time as part of the group project and saw a nursery there growing many diverse plants—marigold flowers, mangoes, lemons, Indian blackberry, jackfruits… We came back inspired to do the same,” she says. “By building the nursery, we are making everyone come together with the idea that everyone will progress together.”

A few miles downhill from Kabripathra, another group of self-sufficient women, Adivasi Mahila Swasahayata Samuh (meaning “tribal womens’ self-help group” in Chattisgarhi), has sprung up in Gond tribal village of Pendri. Headed by Jalesiya Dhurve, the women are guided by village elders, the most vocal among them being 60-year-old Kunti Sayyam.

Sayyam grew up in the jungle adjoining her house, accessible through a rocky stretch of forest pathways, and she has seen it change over the years. “It has thinned out because we—the Baigas—have settled in the area. In the past, the forest used to be so dense that you couldn’t even throw a stick. But it’s not like that anymore,” Sayyam says.

In Pendri, across from the banks of the Chhirpani water reservoir, women have taken to annually sprinkling seeds in the jungle and taking care of the saplings bursting forth from them.

Bringing Conservation and Agriculture Together: A Win–win For Nature and the Community

Samar's Story

One of the village elders of Mahli Ghat, a mountainous village in the hills of Kabirdham, Samar Singh Dhurve has seen the forest disappear over his lifetime. A farmer by profession, Samar has dedicated his life to protecting the forests and regenerating endangered native trees.

Samar, whose farmland has a wide collection of native trees, including some that have vanished from the forests, has been coaching the younger men of the village in conservation. Pointing to a Mahul tree, he recounts, “These leaves were once used as our prized utensils, essential for our rituals. The forest used to be flush with them, but now, not a single plant can be seen.”

Through the intervention of The Nature Conservancy India and Samerth Trust, supported by Commonland, not only has Samar received technical know-how but he has also been able to influence the villages around Mahli Ghat, too. “If people have knowledge, the forests and even the now-rare herbal plants will come back. When we understand and take care of the forest, rare species return. But we must act now—or the remaining forest will be gone,” he says.

Direct Sowing to Make Farming More Sustainable

Samaliya's Story

Not unlike Dhurve, Samaliya Sahu, a sexagenarian farmer and mason who lives 10 miles downhill, has seen not only forest deterioration in recent years but also degradation of the plains where he and his farming community live and work.

Samaliya participates in Kavir Kisan, a project headed up by Agricon under CHiRP’s auspices to create an informed community of farmers working with nature-sensitive techniques. For instance, farmers with smartphones are all members of a WhatsApp group where they regularly share tips, techniques, and insights. A fellow Kavir Kisan member who participates in this group, Bhagwat Chandrakar, notes, “Now we can identify the types of pests on our crops by just sending a picture to a WhatsApp group,” adding, “if none of us know, we take it to the experts at Agricon. It is a tremendous help and support to know that one is not dealing with the variables involved in farming alone.”

For Samaliya, Bhagwat, and fellow Agricon members, the inspiration to learn and adapt through the Kavir Kisan initiative, supported by the CHiRP partnership, is practically helping them to practice sustainable farming, reverse soil erosion from years of chemical inputs, and build resilience to the local effects of climate change.

Samaliya, a third-generation farmer who learned all he knows about farming from his parents, believes a lot of farming techniques have been lost. “Without cattle, a farmer can’t exist,” Sahu points out. “But no one has the patience to deal with the animals anymore, making farming more mechanized. It is not the farming of yore, nor is it completely futuristic. Kavir Kisan is helping me and my friends bridge this gap by reintroducing old concepts and combining them with modern scientific know-how,” he adds.

One such concept is direct sowing. Before he joined Kavir Kisan, Samaliya thought he would have to give up farming as youngsters left the area and he increasingly could not find extra workers to support him with transplanting. “It felt like I was battling the fields alone,” he sighs. “Some days I would stand in my fields, looking at all the work ahead, and wonder how long I could keep this up. The question ‘Will I be able to farm next year?’ weighed on my heart.”

Through direct sowing training organized by Chhattisgarh Agricon Samiti—one of the training sessions the organization runs to help make farming easier and more productive—Samaliya realised he could sow the seeds directly in the soil without the need for transplanting. “No more bending over for hours, no more chasing after laborers. I thought it was worth a try,” he chuckles.

As well as solving his problem related to missing labor, direct sowing even saved electricity and water and gave Samaliya similar yields. “The crops grew strong, and so did my belief in this way of farming. I feel lighter, more independent. I’m not waiting for help that never comes. I’m farming on my own terms again,” he explains, smiling.

The support from the team at Agricon and the simple change of direct sowing has transformed not just Samaliya’s land but his life. “When I look at the green shoots sprouting in my fields, I can’t help but feel a sense of pride. It’s more than just crops growing. It’s hope. Hope that even at my age, I can still farm, still provide for my family,” he emphasizes.

From Chemicals to Care: A Path to Natural Farming

Omprakash's Story

Apart from returning to simpler, older techniques, another focus area for Agricon is helping farmers wean themselves off chemical inputs, which are killing soil life, degrading the surrounding natural ecosystem, and leaving farmers dependent on fertilizers and pesticides to keep up their yields. According to Samaliya, “As more fertilizer is added, more diseases are occurring that didn’t even exist in our grandfathers and great-grandfathers’ day. We are the cause of all this—and unless we change our path and our actions, the coming generations will become handicapped by it.”

In another farming village, Mahli, they’re having huge success with this. Omprakash Chandrakar, a local farmer, has had huge success transitioning away from chemical inputs toward a more nature-inclusive way of farming. He highlights that “I’ve spent my whole life farming and I thought I was doing what was best for my land and my family. But the truth is, I didn’t always know better. For years, my fields were drenched in chemical pesticides and fertilizers. It was what everyone did—the only way we knew to get a good yield. But somewhere deep down, I always felt something was wrong.”

One day, some of Omprakash’s farmer friends attended a Kavir Kisan farmers’ meeting and rushed back to the village afterward to tell him about the methods they’d talked about—natural ways of farming that kept the land healthy. “It’s like farming, but with respect for the soil,” they said. And a lightbulb lit up in Omprakash’s mind: He became a part of Kavir Kisan group and started working with the Kavir team and, soon enough, he was one of the most active people in the movement to change farming locally.

One of the key activities Omprakash started doing as a result of his involvement in Kavir Kisan was testing the soil. This made him realize where he’d been going wrong. “Before joining the Kavir farmers, I had never considered testing my soil. I just kept using chemicals, season after season, believing that more inputs would lead to better crops. But when we tested the soil, I was shocked. The soil didn’t need all those chemicals. It needed care. That’s when I decided—no more synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. I turned to natural farming, using bio-pesticides like Trichoderma, wood vinegar, and simple things like yellow sticky traps,” he explains.

To Omprakash’s surprise, the results were almost the same. The crops matured well, the yield was nearly the same, but the difference was in the feel of the soil and the health of the plants. “I could feel the land breathe again,” he says. “This wasn’t just farming. This was giving back to the earth that has given us so much.”

Omprakash was so enthused by this new farming method that he signed up to be a master trainer for natural farming, guiding other farmers in how to transition their techniques, supporting them to hold monthly meetings to learn, connect, share challenges, and support one another. As Omprakash highlights, “It’s more than farming. It’s about community.”

As a trainer, Omprakash has come up against some skepticism from farmers in neighboring villages but, in every village he visits, he notes a change in farmers’ attitudes after the session. “I’ve seen farmers from neighbouring villages look at what we’re doing with curiosity, sometimes with doubt, but mostly with hope,” he says. “It’s my duty to guide other farmers, to show them that there’s a better way. I encourage my fellow Kavir farmers to think, ‘We are not just growing crops; we are growing the future.’ Our choices today will decide what kind of land we leave for our children. It’s never too late to start treating your land like family.”

By emphasizing to fellow farmers that he’s not extraordinary—that he’s actually just one of them—Omprakash has been a vital pioneer in the local movement, showing farmers that while it’s not easy to change old habits, and while they will make mistakes, when they see their fields green and thriving like his—untouched by harsh chemicals—they’ll know its worth.

As Omprakash emphasises, “farming isn’t just about feeding our families. It’s about nurturing the earth that feeds us all.”



Disrupting the Status Quo to Create New Village Livelihoods

Anuj’s Story

Anuj, a 23-year-old father of two, is a farmer like most residents of Nevratola, a hamlet nestled in the forest next to the Ranidhara waterfall. Along with the rest of the village, Anuj is dependent on ever-declining supplies of forest produce. The increasing scarcity of resources led Anuj to start working with Samerth Trust’s “community mobilizers.”

In 2020, Samerth’s mobilizers started meeting the community to learn about its needs. “In the beginning, when we would try to hold meetings, we were met with rejection,” says mobilizer Purnima Vishwakarma. “Villagers assumed we were after their land and wouldn’t entertain any ideas from us.” She adds, “It was only through sustained engagement that we managed to garner trust within the community. And field trips helped.”

On one such field trip, when Anuj was visiting villages Kanker, Charma, and Bastar, which share a similar geography and demography with his, he spotted several kusum trees (Schleichera oleosa) laden with lac bugs. Kusum trees produce sap, which feeds lac insects, which are used in much of Asia to produce medicines, resin, handicraft items, and more. “We had many kusum trees in the village when I was growing up,” Anuj recalls. “And when I realized that the trees were generating thousands in profit for the villagers, I immediately started to identify the kusum trees on the community forest lands,” he says.

Brainstorming with mobilizers and community members interested in lac cultivation, Anuj decided to start experimenting with lac cultivation on Indian jujube trees (Ziziphus mauritiana), also known as ber trees. “The first try failed, but in the second attempt we managed to make a decent profit,” he says.

However, when they decided to invest more and spread lac cultivation to more trees around their homes, they became victims of their own success: Thieves came in the night and stole much of the lac. “We started keeping watch,” Anuj notes, “but even then we lost a huge chunk of our produce.”

While it was a setback for the first-time cultivators, the lac burglary produced enough gossip to interest the entire village. “We even decided to teach the neighboring villages, if someone there was interested,” Anuj lets on. “This way, we safeguard our crops. After all, when everyone is busy tending their own lac crop, who will steal?”

Anuj, who has since become a master trainer within the community, has seen a rise in his living standards since starting lac cultivation. “I teach people how to bind sticks with lac seed onto the tree, how and when to spray medicine, and how to harvest,” he says. He now plans on taking his produce directly to market instead of selling it to a procurer, cutting out the middleman and increasing village profits.

His first kusum tree is going to be ready this season. He is excited to start the process of binding sticks with lac seed to the tree. “I have taught lac cultivation to around 23 people now! It feels really good to learn and then teach others, too,” Anuj notes. “Our elders had a use for each tree in the forest. To protect what we have left, we will have to ensure that protecting the trees also helps us in generating income.”

Under CHiRP’s program, and in line with the 4 Returns Framework, generating economic returns for local communities is at the core of restoration activities. “All skills, resources, and services—the economy of everything—should be in the village. We should be self-reliant,” says Deepak Biswas, a field staff team member at Samerth. “Once villagers come together and stand on their own—the true meaning of sustainability—then we won’t have to rely on or be concerned with outside economics.”