The COVID-19 experience has removed any doubts about how inextricably countries, communities and societies are linked. It has also clearly highlighted that while responding to crises and providing relief during such global pandemics is critical, what is even more important is building resilient societies and communities that can weather such storms in future.

We, in PRADAN, have been working with communities in remote, rural parts of Central and Eastern India to help build sustainable livelihoods among the poor and marginalised and ensure that they can emerge from intergenerational poverty. While there has been significant disruption in their livelihoods, what has been extremely encouraging is communities’ willingness and ability to ride the storm. It will be pertinent to mention here that agriculture has been the only sector that has witnessed positive growth in the last financial year.

For India’s smallholder farmers, dealing with the second wave of COVID-19 implies more self-contained production system at local level; reduced individual efforts in input provisioning and output marketing; extensive use of digital platform and penetration of such services into the remote tribal belts; and de-risking production system of these smallholders. These specifically translate into ensuring access to better farm inputs, enhanced soil quality and a market for fair price of their harvested crops have become more important than ever before.

Despite being the backbone of subsistence farming, women remain invisible as equal stakeholders in agriculture. Hence, to be recognised as farmers, owners, and decision makers, and build their stake in agriculture, we need to build an ecosystem around them. Trained professionals have a role to play in guiding marginalised farmers in adopting new crops, commodities and horticulture to create more value in their farming practices.

Read the full article about empowering women during COVID-19 by Souparno Chatterjee at AVPN.