How the Green Hub Project is working with the youth to create an ecologically secure future

A group of ten friends studying in Delhi moved to a small town in Madhya Pradesh, in the drylands of India in 1991. Among them, they held a mix of brilliance from different disciplines – economics, literature, science, design, sports and music. This area only had small and marginal farmers, dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Only one crop was sown in a year, and if the rain failed, there was no second option. Every year, it saw huge migration of village people to urban centres looking for daily-wage work. Money lending at 60 per cent interest, bonded labour and degraded land were only a few factors for debilitating poverty that existed here. Thirty years later, the same area has a company of 4,000 women members, benefiting 30,000 women farmers, who now sell and buy directly to the market. The farmers here grow two or three crops annually with the water table having risen over the years with watershed management. An enterprise of garments stitched by underprivileged women and people with disability, with a core team from the local area, has become a brand name. It took a small group of ten people – who could all comfortably get high-paying jobs in...

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