At the southern tip of Rajasthan, cradled by the Mahi River, lies Banswara, a land of hills, slopes and small fields that its people call Vagad. According to the 2011 Census, about 76 percent of the 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 ties them together: the company of Vaagdhara, the strength of the Mahila Saksham (women’s empowerment) groups, and the courage to turn their own baadi, the family garden, into a source of income.

Wadi means a small orchard, but it is far more than a scheme for handing out fruit saplings. A fruit orchard sits at its heart, joined by soil conservation, the development of water sources, community health, sanitation and women’s empowerment. It is a family-centred way of farming, built around a holding of one or two bigha, 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 of Seranagla owns four bigha 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 goes back to the field and restores the soil, and last year the sale of four Sirohi bucks brought in seventy thousand rupees. 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 val 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 forty thousand rupees last year. To protect the garden through the summer she built a water tank and put up fencing, and after 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 has five or six sources of income.

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Figure 1 – Effort turning crimson in the sun: Kokila Devi sits among red chillies drying on a concrete platform. The produce of her baadi now stretches beyond vegetables to spices.

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Figure 2 – Standing in the green shade of papaya and other fruit trees: Kokila Devi in her orchard. Saplings from the Wadi project and a fenced garden form the second layer of her livelihood.

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Kuni Devi Filled the Plate First, Then the Pocket

For Kuni Devi of Navagra, the question was a different one. She has seven bigha of rain-fed land, three buffaloes, two cows, five goats and a family of seven, and her worry was about more than 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 forty thousand rupees.

About two thousand kilos of cow-dung manure, roughly two trolley loads, produced three quintals of onions. She kept fifty kilos for the home and sold the remaining two and a half quintals at twenty-five rupees a kilo, earning 6,250 rupees. Fifteen kilos of lemons brought in another 1,500 rupees, and nine kilos of ghee made from her buffalo milk added nine thousand more.

Kuni Devi puts it simply: the baadi’s first duty is to fill the family’s plate, and its second is to earn.

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Figure 3 – Standing confident amid billowing greenery: Kuni Devi’s face carries the assurance of low-cost, chemical-free farming.

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Figure 4 – Beneath a papaya tree heavy with fruit: Kuni Devi shows how a baadi like hers opens the way to nutrition on the plate and income in the pocket.

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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 bigha 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 twenty-five thousand rupees’ worth of vegetables. For eight months she did not have to buy a single vegetable from the market, saving nearly ten thousand rupees; a rupee not spent is a rupee earned. Of thirty kilos of red chilli, twenty were sold at 280 rupees a kilo for 5,600 rupees, while fifty kilos 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.

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Figure 5 – In conversation with an organisation colleague among green vegetable beds: This bond of training carries the group’s learning to the field.

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Figure 6 – Chillies drying red on a rope, fresh vegetables in hand: Chhagan Devi with the produce that fetched her a good price in the market.

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Figure 7 – Beside the water tank received under Wadi: This means of keeping the baadi green through the heat shows what happens when resources meet learning.

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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 lay 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 crops find their 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.

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Figure 8 – Laxmi Garasia among companions during a field visit: Her story shows that once the process of claiming rights is understood, a village carves out its own path.

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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 toward the genuine swaraj that the soil of this region has dreamed of for years.

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Vikas Parashram Meshram is an independent writer, social worker, and researcher associated with rural development. He regularly writes on issues related to tribal communities, rural livelihoods, agriculture, climate change, and social transformation. He is a regular contributor to Asia-Pacific Research.

All images in this article are from the author

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