The Saga of the Drone Lady

We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better .
—JK Rowling

THAT COULD BE true about operating a drone, creating an organic spray for crops, launching a goat bank, or writing a Harry Potter fantasy series.

When Jayanti Mahapatra went to villages of western Kalahandi district in Odisha sixteen years ago on CSIR work to introduce information technology (IT) to schools, it might have been a near-‘Outlander’ moment that Diana Gabaldon’s fictional character Claire Randall experienced when she found herself transported back in time by two centuries in Scotland. “From my world in Mumbai, it was as if I had stepped into another world, centuries apart,” says Mahapatra.

There were no roads, no electricity, food was cooked on angithis, some huts had no roof, school infrastructure was missing and literacy was just two per cent. IT was still a dis­tant dream. They could not even find proper schools. She and her team returned, shocked at the life there, not just a world apart from the metropolises outside Odisha but also from cities like Bhubaneswar and Puri within the state. That was when Rourkela-born Mahapatra decided she needed to do something to change, not the world, but a tiny part of it. That too, in her home state.

Her mind kept returning to Kalahandi, which is also where her husband Biren Sahu belongs. In 2015, leaving a job with HSBC and life in the bustling city, she and her husband moved back to Odisha, to Salebhata in Kalahandi, where in the hard black soil of the impoverished region only cotton was grown. The diet of the locals mainly con­sisted of fat red rice and vegetables like pumpkin and other gourds. With whatever investments they had and with the help of JP Mathur, a father figure to them who was the first Oxford-educated agriculture specialist from the place, sweet corn was grown. “That’s how the farmers came to us,” says Mahapatra. The residue from it could be used as fodder for small ruminants.

She noticed that for the locals no celebration was com­plete without mutton, a dish they relished on Sundays, and at times on Wednesdays and Fridays as well, since they would not eat meat on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mahapatra claims the meat market was worth ₹4,500 crore in Odisha and parts of adjoining areas. “But the supply chain was unorganised. The goat rearer got just ₹120 per kilogram. There was no mandi or market concept and a certain section of people monopolised the milk market.”

Since a different model of livelihood was needed for the in­habitants, they started research on goat breeding. In October 2017, Manikstu Agro, as they called their startup, (manikstu meaning being blessed in the lap of Goddess Manikeshwari), was operational with the first pilot project of 50 goats. Instead of money, they lend goats. The first 25 were given to women. Farmers are provided two female goats, each about a year old.

Goats start giving birth in a year and have three or more kids. After the goats deliver, the farmers return 50 per cent of the new goats to the goat bank, which provides regular check-up, vac­cination and de-worming. The idea was to double the income of goat farmers and make the sector more organised. Of the 40 veterinarians in the bank, 27 are local women and youth. Products like goat manure, milk and ghee are sold in the mar­ket, including on e-commerce sites like Amazon. At Salebhata, where electricity finally came in 2020, the farm has 500 goats and nearly 1,000 farmers of 40 vil­lages are associated with Manikstu.

A postgraduate in business man­agement, with a Masters in psycho­therapy with 15 years of experience in diverse fields, primarily banking, Mahapatra, 43, now spends half the month in Kalahandi and the rest in other parts of the state. “We have a room in the farm. I am basically a rustic from a middle-class family, and used to living with basics,” she says. Her red-brick and blue-walled room with floral tiles has two sim­ple beds, a small refrigerator and a kitchenette. The food is cooked in the common kitchen in the farm, which also has rooms for the staff.

Her brother runs a cricket academy for tribal children in and around the state and her sister works with the weavers’ com­munity. There is still more in the pipeline, as the Manikstu family tries to live up to its mission—agriculture as business enterprise to enhance communities. Jayanti Mahapatra was one of the three women who figured in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest Mann ki Baat episode. “It came as such a surprise. It also gave us the confidence that we are doing the right thing,” she says.

“I feel very happy to see that successful professionals in various fields are adopting novel methods to make small farmers empowered and self-reliant. Their efforts are going to inspire every­one,” Modi had said. With Inter­national Women’s Day round the corner at the time, he cited three women entrepreneurs—all un­famed, treading into uncharted terrain in their own rural corners, caught unawares that they had drawn the attention of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Modi quoted Tamil writer, poet and social reformer Subramania Bharathi, who had said the “world will prosper in knowledge and in­tellect, if both men and women are deemed equal.”

FOR KALYANI PRAFULLA PATIL, it still feels like a dream that the prime minister himself spoke to her for eight minutes, three minutes of which were played on Mann Ki Baat, praising her work in organic farming. Patil and other women of the village got together and collected 10 types of flora and made an organic spray from it, minimising the use of pesticides.

Since a different model of livelihood was needed for the inhabitants, Jayanti Mahaptra started research on goat breeding. In October 2017, Manikstu Agro, as they called their startup, was operational with the first pilot project of 50 goats. Instead of money, they lend goats. The first 25 were given to women. After the goats deliver, the farmers return 50 per cent of the new goats to the goat bank

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“I am still overwhelmed when people from the media call up,” she says. When Patil did her MSc in microbiology from Jalgaon in Maharashtra, she had made up her mind not to let her education go to waste. After two years of teaching at the Mahatma Gandhi College in Chopda, a town in Jalgaon in Maharashtra, she got married. When she got pregnant, Patil gave up teaching.

A mother of two who has been working in her Shirud gram panchayat for three years, Patil attended various train­ing programmes on water and soil, including with Paani Foundation, an NGO involved in drought prevention and watershed management, founded by actor Aamir Khan and his ex-wife Kiran Rao. “We would organise farming compe­titions and learnt how to naturally contain pests that were harmful,” says Patil.

Around 30-40 women got together and formed groups, and started working, keeping in mind standard operating procedures. Patil’s educational background came in handy. When sowing season started, the women began preparing the land. “When the sun came out, the worms would come out. We checked the seeds for fungus and did anti-fungal treat­ment. Since there were no longer trees in farms for the birds, we made T-structures.”

Days before the call from the prime minister, Patil had an inkling something “big” was about to happen. She got a call from local authorities asking if she could speak Hindi. Later, inquiries were made about her from New Delhi. “It was all unexpected,” she says.

SUNITA VERMA OF SITAPUR in Uttar Pradesh was in her one-room rented home when she got a call from the prime minister. A 33-year-old graduate with two children, she is now a ‘Drone Didi’, under a government initiative to empower wom­en by making them financially independent by using drones on farms. Sunita now earns ₹300 for an acre of land where the drone is used. She has so far covered 55 acres. She had got an in­dication a couple of days earlier that she could get a call from the prime minister. “Initially, I felt a fear inside. I guess it’s natural. But later I gathered the courage and spoke,” she recalls.

After her graduation, Sunita wanted to work, but she had no clue that one day she would be operating drones. She heard about it from Daya Shankar Shrivastava, the head of Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK). “They were looking for a woman to run a drone. I had seen one at the KVK in Sitapur, but I had not heard about its uses,” she says. After filling a form and enquiring about educational qualifications, a final interview was held in Delhi, followed by training of around 20 women at the Phulpur IFFCO company in Allahabad.

For Kalyani Prafulla Patil, it still feels like a dream that the prime minister himself spoke to her for eight minutes, three minutes of which were played on Mann Ki Baat, praising her work in organic farming. Patil and other women of the village got together and collected 10 types of flora and made an organic spray, minimising the use of pesticides

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On Mann ki Baat, Sunita told the prime minister that after being taught theory for two days about the drone, on the third day, a test was taken on computer. After that, a practical was conducted on how to fly the drone. The drone is used to spray large fields so that farm hands do not need to enter them. An acre of land can be sprayed in 10 minutes. Standing on the edge of the field, Sunita uses the drone to cover the farm. She also says every time a huge crowd gathers to watch her work and big farmers are taking her mobile number to call her to use the drone over their field. Her earnings go into household expenses and her children’s education. But she is happy for getting this opportunity.

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Amita Shah