Vidhayak Sansad has run economic development programs nearly since its inception. Early programs focused on rearing livestock. Later, as the struggle against bonded labor began, VS worked closely with former bonded laborers to help them become self-sufficient earners. The organization established co-operative farms, set up a credit union for the purchase of fertilizers, seeds, and insecticides, and provided forums for small farmers to share technical advice. These programs aided hundreds of former bonded laborers in becoming successful, independent farmers.

Today Vidhayak Sansad is building a new agricultural livelihood program for the rural poor centered on the jatropha plant. The oil from seeds of the jatropha plant can be processed into an effective bio-diesel. The plant can grow in degraded, hilly land, which many tribal and other impoverished farmers possess. Therefore jatropha plant cultivation has the potential to become a major source of income for these farmers.

VS successfully lobbied the Maharashtra government to include the jatropha plant cultivation in the state’s Employment Guarantee Scheme. The government now provides financial benefits to impoverished farmers who grow this plant. VS has created a nursery for the plants and is engaged in the process of distributing the plants to impoverished farmers. The organization is also the planning phase of developing a plant to refine the oil of jatropha seeds into bio-diesel, which will be owned and operated by a local farmers’ co-operative.

The following charts illustrate the development of jatropha plant cultivation in select blocks of Thane District where Vidhayak Sansad’s program is active:

Details of cultivation in 2008

Jetropha cultivated in the following blog

We are aware of the controversies surrounding jatropha cultivation, especially that government incentives to produce a non-edible crop cut down on food production, but we find that for farmers possessing otherwise unproductive land, jatropha cultivation can be an important source of income with limited to no impact on the local food supply.