SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, March 27: The faculty members of the Department of Management Studies at IIT Indian School of Mines (ISM) Dhanbad taught tribal farmers of the remote Jamtara district about scientific farming.
A group of faculty members of the Department of Management Studies, under Prof Rashmi Singh, today visited Khijuria village of Fatehpur block of Jamtara and apprised farmers about farming to improve their economic well-being.
The workshop was organized in the Panchayat Bhavan of Khijuria village as part of a Department of Science and Technology-sponsored project titled “Improving the Economic Well-Being of Scheduled Tribe Communities Using Game Theoretic and Operations Research Techniques”.
“Altogether, 35 farmers, Krishi Mitra of Khijuria and adjoining villages under Jamuni Hembrom, village Mukhiya, attended the session and learnt about the existing irrigation pattern, soil types, farming technique, and source of income,” said Rashmi Singh, assistant professor of the Department of Management Studies.
Prof Rashmi is the principal Investigator of the project. She added that the soil fertility of the village was more or less good, but there is a lack of proper irrigation facilities.
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“We suggested the farmers harp millets like Bajra and Ragi, which can be grown with lesser water availability,” said Prof Singh.
Associate professor Niladri Das, the co-principal Investigator of the project, informed the farmers that double cropping is also possible in the village with a sufficient supply of water, provision of good quality seed, and scientific farming.
Prof Niladri Das further added that the workshop was aimed at understanding the specific problems of Khijuria village of Fatehpur block, designing specific interventions for them, and validating the data received by the project team through the questionnaire.
“Though farmers are generally viewed as producers of essential goods and not as informed farm-based entrepreneurs/investors, our project basically proposed that the farmers be viewed as producers of essential goods,” said Das.
He said workshops had been conducted earlier in more than 16 villages of the Jamtara as part of the project. Virendra Kisku, a field worker of the Science for Equity Empowerment and Development (SEED) project, was also in the team.
