Residing in village Pipronia under Pichhore Block of Shivpuri District, Kapuri Adiwasi wife of Brinda Adiwasi took a courageous decision of constructing a farm pond near her well in 2019. This is the story of how that decision changed their lives forever.

A family of 8 members, mostly dependent on agriculture and daily wage jobs, Kapuri Adiwasi is the owner of a 6 bigha land, half her land being upland and the rest, medium plain land. The whole land could only be cultivated during the Kharif cropping season which is from July – October during the southwest monsoon. In the rabi season, only 3 bighas of land could be cultivated as a result of water scarcity. Though they own a well, the water available only facilitates the growth of crops like mustard which need 2 irrigations only.

In 2019, Kapuri and Brinda Adiwasi were introduced to the PRIF-Vikalp project (2019-2020) an intervention by SRIJAN in the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh. This exposure led her to take the decision to construct a farm pond near her well.

In the rabi season, the farm pond helped with the irrigation of 3 bighas of land which yielded 5.58 quintals of mustard, while the water from the well-irrigated 1 bigha of extra land to grow wheat. The mustard was sold and earned Rs. 25,000/- from the market. This sum not only helped repay the loan amount for the water pump, but Kapuri also set aside a small amount for her son’s marriage plans. The wheat grown in the extra 1 bigha was used for their own consumption. Now Kapuri’s plan is to expand the farm pond during this summer season so that more water can be collected during the rainy season and used for enhancing their farm produce.