A success story
Aditya group of Golaghat is among one of the several Self Help Groups (SGHs), which is doing exceeding well in the North-East.

North East News Agency

Assam is not the land of some gun yielding youths. The North-Eastern state of the country has also given birth to many and dedicated youths, who have overcome all difficulties to establish themselves as economically independent and enterprising youth. There have emerged a number of groups that have started various agricultural related income generating activities to benefit themselves and also set examples for hundred others in      the region.

Meet the group members of Aditya group of Golaghat in upper Asom. The group under Gomariguri Development Block was formed in July 2002. Initially it was a small initiative to market the agricultural products (mostly Rabi Crops) of   the members of the group. Thirteen young men and a woman used to cultivate their own land for Rabi crops which was then sent to the market. Their initiative started giving them result. Soon they were  advised to form a group under Self Help regulation.

The members of the group thus formed Aditya SHG and opened a saving bank account in the local branch of Asom Gramin Bikash Bank (earlier Pragjyotish Gaonlia Bank). Three advisors were also enrolled in the group. Soon the group purchased a tractor for cultivating their land. Rice (mostly Sali) was by all the members of the group. The locality is not flood prone and hence the production was satisfactory. However the land was not used during the winter season. The group members then decided to start Rabi crops in their fields.

Their tractor was used for tilling the land. First, the advantage was confined to the members only. But soon the members decided to extend support to other villagers also. Their tractor was hired by other farmers for tilling their land. More over, the tractor with a carrier truck was used for earth cutting and carrying for different occasions.

Now the tractors (another new one has been purchased by the group recently) are mostly used to carry the vegetables such as Tomato, Capsicum, cabbage, ginger and other vegetables of the group  to the market.Their products are marketed in various parts of the region including Tinsukia, Merapani, Jorhat and also Guwahati. More often, they buy the produces of other farmers of the village and sell in the markets with marginal profit. The initiative has become helpful for many small farmers in the village as they have started getting a minimum value for their products.

The Aditya group has carved a niche in agricultural production in the locality. They market their produces under the banner AVP (Aditya Vegetable Products). “Today our brand name AVP is well recognized in the markets. We also try to maintain the quality of our products,” said Durgeswar Saikia, one of the active members of the group.

Apart from the two tractors, the group also owns a mini-rice mill, a shop dealing in fertilizers and pesticides and also a broiler farm. “We had over Rs 85 Iakh of transaction during the last financial year. The estimated net profit must be around Rs 3 lakh,” informed Saikia. Today over 500 poor families of farmers in the locality is dependent on the Aditya group. The group often makes to help the downtrodden especially the widows by tilling their land free of cost. “Our tractors are hired by other farmers time to time. And many times, we help the poor and widows to get their land tilled with only the price of fuel and very often we give it absolutely free,” says Biren Saikia, advisor to Aditya group.

Aditya SHG is one of those hundred thousand successful SHGs in Asom that is inspired by the Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) of the Government of India. Launched by the Ministry of Rural Development (GOI), the scheme emphasizes on group approach, where the rural people are encouraged to form self help groups with the members of ‘below poverty line’ families.

The last annual report of the Ministry of Rural Development reveals that over 30 lakh SHGs       were formed in India, where around hundred thousand groups had taken different economic activities like handicraft, mushroom, piggery, dairy forming, mechanized agriculture, Rabi crop etc. Assam Government source reveals that there are over 1 lakh SHGs, formed till date. It involves nearly 15 lakh Below Poverty Level families that count around 20% of the total population of Asom (2.6Crore).

Aditya group had received the Rs 10,000/- as Revolving Fund from DRDA, Golaghat. Later they had gone for a loan of Rs 25,000/- from the bank. After its repayment the group applied for another bigger amount of loan to buy a tractor. With a subsidy of nearly Rs one lakh they purchased the tractor and increased the number to two.

Now they are planning to buy a truck to increase the capability of vegetable carriages during the peak season. “As we have no facility of storage here, it becomes essential to dispatch the vegetables collected from the paddy fields as early as possible. Otherwise, those will get decomposed within a short interval,” asserted Nandeswar Saikia, another member of Aditya group.

The young entrepreneurs however did not forget to inform that they had a plan to start a cold storage for the benefit of the farmers in the locality.

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