Creating awareness on the importance of millets among children is the mission of this organisation in Gobichettipalayam. Myrada (Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency) is working among tribal and their children in an area where facilities such as transportation, electricity, toilets and proper schools are still unavailable. Guna, a Class IX student, attends school after helping his parents in the field, unlike his classmates who are from plains. Their parents run small businesses and have better yielding farms. But long hours of arduous work makes him tired and sleep in the class. But the teachers are not complaining. His teacher Selvam allows him to sleep. After all the teacher’s life as a child was no different from that of Guna’s.
But, Guna loves farming Neither is Guna complaining. He is learning farming from his parents and it is only going to be helpful for his future. Unlike in the plains, life in the hilly regions is complicated. Water is a big problem and farmers depend on the rains.
In tribal hamlets like the one Guna lives in, almost everyone has a small farm and tries to grow hardy food crops that can survive no rainfall. Guna’s parents have four acres of dryland and use almost all of them to cultivate millet: ragi.
Guna is already an expert in ragi cultivation, but he has no idea about other millets, until Myrada intervened. Myrada instils confidence in him about growing millets (which requires less water) and their values. And Guna is proud to uphold the ancient tradition of eco-friendly farming too.
(M.J. Prabu is The Hindu’s Agriculture correspondent. He writes the popular Farmer’s Notebook. Write to him at prabu.mj@thehindu.co.in)
