Shripad A. Dabholkar was an educationist of a unique kind. His efforts were to shape education as a tool for total change in the life situation of an average worker in rural areas. Gifted with originality in thinking, Dabholkar dared to take the untrodden path. Realizing the limitation of conventional academic system in which he played a part as a teacher for 25 years, he left it to undertake the task of educating farmers through demystification of science, adopting innovative non-formal methods of knowledge communication. He was a lone campaigner, typical of his independent temperament. But being a man of conviction, he decided to reach solutions in his own life situations. He succeeded in creating mass awareness and interest in farmers, who the formed their own groups called Prayog Pariwar (experimenting cells), even in his absence. This was network building par excellence, resulting in a new sociology of science and education. Dabholkar started his mission in Tasgaon, a village in Sangli district in Maharashtra, among the grape cultivators. Soon the productivity in the district rose to world standards and grape production became a highly productive activity, inducing small farmers to turn to it. Dabholkar has then successfully extended the applied research to other crops as well.
Prayog Pariwar methodology Prayog Pariwar methodology is about networking of self-experiment ventures for nature friendly and human friendly prosperity. The central thesis is that without depending on foreign aid or imported technology, economic development can be achieved by experimenting farmers and by common individuals in their own neighborhoods. It evolved out from an initiative by S.A. Dabholkar in Maharashtra, India, in the mid-1960s. By then the network was called Swashraya Vikas Mandal, meaning self-help and self-reliance for building new possibilities by working in one's own real-life situation. These groups also pioneered collaborative networking practices and an Internet-type information exchange using postcards. Dabholkar described the Prayog Pariwar methodology in the book "Plenty for all" (Mehta Publishing House, 1998) where he defines and establishes a non structured approach for development in the neighborhood through: grassroot networking demystification of latest science, knowledge and new thoughts to generate and propagate people's own techno-scientific ventures full fledged eco-motive rurban development all over the world. Source:Wikipedia Read below: Naturally, Mr Grapes Mathematician farmer S.A. Dabholkar devises his own formula for farming Shameem Akhtar on S.A. Dabholkar HE is better known as Dr Pumpkin and Mr Grapes. Professionally, he is the country's foremost agronomist. Shripad A. Dabholkar denies all this. "I am not an agronomist. Just an ordinary social scientist," he says. A scientist who pioneered the 1960s grape revolution in Maharashtra, when vines proliferated—from the monopolising Nashik and Baramati districts—into the state's drought-blighted parts that today yield Rs 5 crore worth of grapes. Unlike natural farming, Dabholkar's Natueco method involves farming by knowing nature better through clinical scientific enquiry and experiment. A fact you confront as soon as you reach his house in Kolhapur, which screams publicity for his forthcoming book, Plenty for All. Where rust-red pineapples and golden cane grow alongside. As also bamboo reeds and tiny trees which in season are pregnant with fruits and vegetables—papaya, custard apple, aphus mango, sweet lime, tomatoes, beans and lemon—sandalwood and lavender. The magician further rakes his fingers through the soft, darkly-rich loam and produces potatoes and other tubers. Plenty for all. And as fecund as his 73-year-old life. Even today tales of Dabholkar's 1967 breakthrough, when he prodigiously cajoled 17 grape-bunches to crowd on a single cane, continue to reap international recognition, like with the Euro Fruits award. But typically, he says: "The grape revolution is only one part of the entire Prayog Pariwar movement (a decentralised education system that has actual experiments and life's experiences for its databank). In fact, many make me out to be a terrace-garden specialist! But I am trying to live as the Last Man, on minimal resources. I am now focusing on wasteland, working on the 10-gunta land experiment." Dabholkar not only believes, but has proved that a family can subsist on an ordinary 100 sq mt plot solely by harnessing the energy of the sun, tapping the recycling process and working in tandem with nature's energy chain. The government's only commitment should be in meeting the family's daily minimum requirement of 1,000 litres of water. For the rest, "the waste water generated by the family will suffice for farming if one knows the rules of nature and listens to them constantly. There is almost a mathematical precision in its laws which, if followed, will provide plenty for all." An MA in Mathematics, he should know. Dabholkar's dream is now being transplanted in Busaver and other centres. Natueco culture, the new farming concept introduced by Prayog Pariwar, "is not natural or organic farming", he notes. "In Natueco culture, we farm by knowing nature more and better through critical scientific inquiries and experiments. It is an ever-growing tryst between man and nature and is no way related to today's commercial techniques of farming." He has also rewritten the agro-lexicon by introducing words like techniracy (technical literacy), sagriculture (sun science in agriculture) and venturananda (one who delights in discovering ventures). The last is yet another sobriquet conferred on him by Sevagram Gandhians. Playwright Vijay Tendulkar discovered this quiet genius more by accident than by design when he decided to make a film on a revolutionary agricultural scientist. "I've always avoided the media, shunned financial grants because they exert an artificial control. When Tendulkar came to film me, he was amazed that he hadn't heard of my work till then. Now he is nodal in the publication of my book. With me things have happened more by chance than with planning." As was his encounter with international expert Ivan Illiych in 1970, which introduced him to conference circuits and the information web abroad. "My thinking was appreciated 20 years ago abroad," Dabholkar points out, an unstated rebuke in his voice. He remembers, without rancour, how when his grape-growers overran rural Maharashtra with luscious fruit, an impressed bureaucrat had organised a meeting with him, but later cancelled it following virulent objections against a "mathematics graduate being allowed to discuss agriculture". His life, like his assays, has been simple but different. He recounts how his neighbours indulgently laughed at his persistence in growing plumb prize water-melons in a scant bucketful of soil in his backyard at Gargoti. Education was never a goal for Dabholkar since he fiercely believed in Tagore's adage that real education must make us "vitally savage but mentally civilised". So Dabholkar set out on a voracious self-study of the sciences, including psychology, medicine, anthropology, political science, yoga and philosophy. He also formed the Shastra Sidhi Sadhanalay, an organisation for the like-minded to meet and brainstorm. His advocate father and nine siblings supported his belief, culled and reaffirmed through the Quit India Movement, that "it was a sin to build an individual academic career in a country of ignorance and slavery". Mai Samachar, Dabholkar's news bulletin, which threads about 100 family members over three generations, is a source of "family pride and warmth". Armed with will-power, chalk-and-board and an MA in Mathematics, the young Dabholkar decided to deschool education with his "open self-study courses", which encouraged participation from school dropouts and elderly women through an information card system. Here the student was often the teacher, depending on the information he had to share. It made Dabholkar self-sufficient and gave him "remuneration more than the pay drawn by contemporary college principals nearby". BUT since any permanent institutional form choked his free spirit, Dabholkar shut down the course in 1958 and joined the New Delhi-sponsored Mouni Vidyapeeth experiment, founded by Dabholkar's mentor and educationist, Dr J.P. Naik, where "covering the syllabi rested with the learner and the guide friend" and where a student could, without fee, "acquire coveted degrees by studying in their free time". His flash report in 1966 in the Marathi magazine Kirloskar, on mining nature's cache through innovative experiments, struck a responsive chord among many. In a year's time, Dabholkar was flooded with 10,000 letters from across the country. He responded individually to each, set up the fraternity of Swashraya Vikas Mandal, where invaluable information was exchanged through letters. It soon matured into a family that is the Prayog Pariwar, and which, over letters, discourses on every aspect of nature. The grape revolution, which tags his name, is only a part of this, Dabholkar maintains. His achievement became a legend when he miraculously transformed a stolen vine graft (since Baramati grape-growers jealously guarded their vineyards) into a fast-spreading runner that precociously bore fruit in the first year itself (normally it needs a three-year maturity period) and yielded a rich unseasonal harvest of 16 tonnes per acre even in the monsoon. He is constantly invited to partake in various experiments but Dabholkar takes care not to rend his link with the Prayog Pariwar's information web, personally answering letters from industrialists like Kanti Shroff of Excel inquiring on how to harness power with bullock carts or advising NGOs like Vasant Gangavane on their Rs 3 crore Indo-German venture in Ratnagiri. But the wisdom he imparts to one and all is: "There is no wasteland anywhere in this world. You can create a rain forest in your backyard and an equatorial forest on your terrace." You better believe it. For, the miracle is there for all to see. And taste. Source:Outlook He Who has in fact Wrought a Revolution Arun Shourie "When Dabholkar comes to Delhi next, I must get the two of you together," Dr J P Naik, would say. When I was to go to Bombay for some work, he would urge, "Take two days off, go to Kolhapur and meet Dabholkar." Years passed, Dr J P Naik passed away, I never got to meet his friend, Dr Shripad Dabholkar. And then I saw a little snippet in a video magazine of the Plus Channel. It was about an agronomist in Bombay, Dr R T Doshi. The programme showed his roof farm -- on his roof in the middle of Bombay, he was cultivating grapes, vegetables, fruit, even six foot high sugarcane. I went to visit him the next time I got to Bombay. The second time I was able to take Anita, my wife along. I am just following the methods of Dr Dabholkar, Dr Doshi told us. Therefore, when the Pudhari group of newspapers asked me to deliver a memorial lecture in Kolhapur, I agreed at once to do so. And even before the lecture, I went to Dr Dabholkar's house. It was late in the evening. A score or more villagers were there. It turned out that villagers from all over Maharashtra visit the place regularly -- to see, to learn, to share their knowledge and the results of their experiments. I still remember my gasp of wonderment as we came out of the staircase and stepped on to the roof of Dr Dabholkar's modest house. Vegetables in pots. On one side, corn stalks five feet high. In another, sugarcane. In one pot -- just a small 12" pot -- a mango plant with a mango larger than my hand. A layer of soil made from vegetable-waste, from leaves and the rest : Dr Dabholkar would lean down, and pluck from under the surface ginger, garlic, even potatoes. On one side, by the wall, standing high and erect in what seemed just a pile of the same sort of soil, a subabul tree -- almost two storeys high. I was wonder-struck, and returned to Delhi full of enthusiasm. Anita and her mother had started a roof garden. They were enthused to do more, they began to experiment with some of the new ways Dr Dabholkar had worked out. Today the garden is a joy for all of us. It has flowering plants of various kinds. A 6' bottle-brush tree, a 5' ficus, vines of several sorts. Bougainvillea of many colours blaze away, the ones which are planted on the ground below have climbed two storeys, the ones on this roof climb another storey. Harsinghar, Oleander, Champa, Anar, two varieties of Gulmohar -- with the evocative names Krishnachur and Radhachur -- each 5' tall in pots, lemon grass, basil, karonda, the tulsi of course, fragrant motia and juhi, bamboo gifted by a friend in Assam.... Each plant is a joy for Anita and her mother, each is a boon for me -- for the room in which I work opens on to this lovely garden, and beyond it are trees, almost thirty of these have been planted in and around our house by Anita. Each time I step into the garden, I am of course grateful for their labour of love, I am also reminded of that magical evening at Dr Dabholkar's house. All these years I have felt, "If only there were a book that set out what Dr Dabholkar has done, his experiments, the methods which he has evolved..." At last Dr Dabholkar has himself completed a book about his life and experiments. Entitled, Plenty for All it is being published by the Mehta Publishing House of Kolhapur. Dr Dabholkar's life is a romance. It is also a life of enormous achievement. Ever since he was a child, Dabholkar had a fascination for experiments, and he had a real gift in growing vegetables, fruit, plants : pumpkins in pots -- the vine would originate in the pot, the pumpkin would sprout in and then come to rest outside it, its size larger than the pot! -- watermelons in riverbeds, bananas in stone heaps. Dabholkar graduated, but instead of taking a conventional job, he began "Open self-study courses". With no more capital than a chalk and a blackboard, he began giving instruction to anyone and everyone who came forward -- mostly persons who had dropped out from conventional schools, those who had failed in conventional classes, elderly women. He would teach them whatever they wanted to learn. His teaching would prepare them for securing admissions to and degrees from the institutionalized system. But the methods of imparting knowledge were entirely non-conventional : "I never had to impart teaching, coaching or tuition to anyone," he writes. "It was not a class in the regular sense. My methods were (1) to make one understand the form of the subject under study, its conceptual contents, the catchwords and the terminology used...; (2) the relationship of ideas and topics; (3) some common analogies and illustrations from their own life situations; (4) all this in the students' own form of expression...; (5) in about 15 to 20 sessions, I treated the subject; (6) for the rest of the year I allowed the student to work out the rest of the subject himself, with the aid of my card-sets; (7) he also interacted with textbooks, and (8) with anyone in the group who he thought could help discuss and resolve his difficulty." The institution became a great success -- Dabholkar himself was earning more than principals of conventional institutions in the town, students from advanced educational institutions located far away were coming to attend the courses for at least a few days. A second branch of the institution was soon set up 50 kilometers away. The work went on for 8 years, Dabholkar began losing interest in it. He wound up the place entirely. "I began to pine for a complete break with the entire system," he explains, "I am not the type suited to permanent institutional forms of any type." He heard of and soon joined the Mouni Vidyapeeth, an institution which Dr J P Naik had helped found. It was 55 kilometers from the nearest urban settlement. Here he was given the fullest opportunity to put his ideas of non-institutional learning into practice. "I made an open call to various staff members to undertake to teach any subject that they liked the most, irrespective of their academic qualifications, to whosoever wanted to learn it. No fees were charged and no regular remuneration was given," he records. "The entire manner of covering syllabi rested with the learner and the guide-friend. It worked smoothly and successfully. Without any type of institutional form or pressure, more than a hundred students received their secondary certificates as well as their much coveted university degrees by studying at any odd free time that they and their guide-friends found suitable." In spite of the success of this experiment too, Dabholkar soon concluded that the complex life of our rural areas could just not be changed through institutional activities and training : "In whatever way the institutions may work, the standard curriculum of the system kills all the germs of creativity and originality," he writes -- a lesson that is recited at every seminar on education, but a lesson to which our educational institutions have shut their ears. By 1966, Dabholkar had begun work in an entirely new sphere, work which was to transform the lives of lakhs and lakhs. At Mouni Vidyapeeth, each staff member had a modest house with a little space around it. With his childhood fascination for experiments, and his gift at growing plants, Dabholkar began experiments in agriculture, horticulture, poultry, sericulture, in rearing goats, in rearing rabbits, in developing arid wasteland.... In everything he did, he would start with no more resources than are available to a farmer living below the poverty line -- a farmer who is in debt, who has no land other than a patch of dry wasteland, who has no resource other than his own unpaid labour. "The whole place, which used to be barren wasteland," he writes, "became like a forest of fruit plants, all healthy, all productive and all taking their nourishment from the symbiotic built-in aggregate from the garden waste." People started visiting the place -- to see, to discuss. In ten years about 10,000 visitors had come, left their addresses in the hope that, if he started courses on the basis of these experiments, he would let them know. He had thus acquired, without building it, a list of ten thousand persons -- each one of them eager to participate in the next phase of his work. The food situation in the country deteriorated in the early '60s. In 1965 Pakistan drove into Kutch, and there was another war. Dabholkar was filled with concern about food availability in the country. At the invitation of the editor of a Marathi magazine, Kirloskar, he prepared a special 24-page supplement in which he gave what he calls a "flash report" of his experiments and their results. The effect can be glimpsed from the reaction : the supplement was published in January 1966; within the year he received over 10,000 letters from persons offering to join his network of experimenters. At the time, few thought that grapes could be grown in drought-prone areas of Maharashtra. Dabholkar began with this precise fruit. Today the drought prone areas of Maharashtra -- with annual rainfall of no more than 12" -- produce grapes worth Rs five hundred crores a year. Farmers in his net produce sixteen tons of grapes to an acre. They have been given national awards for their innovative practices, for the yields they have secured. It is not just in the amounts produced that Dabholkar has made a breakthrough. He and his "Prayog Parivar" -- his family of experimenters -- has revolutionized every aspect of grape cultivation -- spacing the vines, training them, thinning and girdling them, preserving the fruit, and so on. And grapes are just one of the crops which have felt his touch. And in the case of every crop his experiments and innovations have been attuned to the small and marginal farmer. And to using locally available resources -- not just resources available in the locality, but resources available on that small plot of a quarter acre or an acre : obtaining in this round one set of nutrients from plants of one type for the next round, obtaining different nutrients from different parts -- the roots, the leaves, the stems, husk, bagasse -- of the plant, obtaining different nutrients by composting the plant at different stages of its growth. He has established that a family of five with just a quarter of an acre can grow enough to acquire a living standard in terms of nourishment and income of a middle class family -- and this has been established not in theory but in the plots themselves, and not just by him but by farmers and families which have adopted the methods he has pioneered. No wonder, he is today, and has been for fifteen years in demand all over Maharashtra. He travels incessantly -- holding "classes" all over, these are attended by 400 to 1200 farmers. His house, as I saw, is a living school. Dabholkar's life and work hold a score of lessons. To start with, consider the effect he has had -- the output of grapes is today Rs five hundred crores, this is so in the areas of Maharashtra which are drought-prone, it is the output which farmers with holdings of half an acre to two acres a piece have secured. How many lakhs of lives must have been transformed as a result of this venture alone. As I put this effect alongside the "effect" which our "Demand-and-Denounce" activists have, I am reminded of what Gandhiji said while chiding the young Communists. They would prance around as Revolutionaries -- with a capital 'R', and heap abuse at him, "an agent of the bourgeoisie," they would shout, a "lackey of imperialism," they would shriek, "an instrument of the bania-landlord class," they would howl, "a representative of the comprador classes," they would scream, "the blind messiah," they would yell. Gandhiji smiled, and remarked, "Many have just talked revolution, I have worked one !" In contrast to our activists -- and what a mass base they have managed to contrive in press clubs! -- Dabholkar too is one who has in fact wrought a revolution. But that is just the first of many things which set Dabholkar apart. Source: Asian Age Dabholkar’s achievements, of course, went way beyond pointing towards the potential of unused building terraces for growing food says Satish Purohit “At the time, few thought that grapes could be grown in drought-prone areas of Maharashtra. Dabholkar began with this precise fruit. Today the drought prone areas of Maharashtra – with annual rainfall of no more than 12” – produce grapes worth Rs 500 crores a year. Farmers that use his methods produce 16 tonnes of grapes to an acre, which has earned them several national awards for innovative practices and the yields they have secured,” Shourie elaborates. Although this remarkable genius is no more, Dabholkar’s Prayog Parivar continues to work towards making sustainable agriculture possible for all, including those living in metropolitan cities like Chennai and Mumbai. I met with one such group in Mumbai that goes by the name Urban Leaves. A part of The Vidya Varidhi Trust, a body that works towards empowering local communities so they become aware, healthy, self-reliant, self-sustaining and productive, Urban Leaves is experimenting with Dabholkar’s ideas in city settings. At the head of the group is Preeti Patil, a catering officer at the Mumbai Port Trust who tends to the institution's 3,000 sq ft rooftop garden. The central kitchen of the Mumbai Port Trust feeds approximately 3,000 employees daily, generating around 18 kg of organic waste every day. The terrace garden, which has over 150 plants, recycles 90 per cent of this waste. What is, in other contexts, mere garbage, produces vegetables and fruits thanks to the efforts of Preeti and her team at MbPT. Amidst the surprisingly lush tulsi and mint grow vegetables like spinach, okra, brinjal and cherry tomatoes and fruits like guava, mangoes, coconuts, custard apples and chikoos. “Dabholkar outlined how a family of five can live a self-sufficient life on 10 gunthas (approximately 10,000 square feet) of land along with two cows with no extra inputs from outside except water,” explains Preeti, who believes one can practice urban farming even in a 1BHK flat in a crowded Indian city. “You would be surprised at how much you can grow on the window sill of the smallest flat. Quite a few of our members grow chillies, pudina, palak and tomatoes in their homes. The good thing is that these plants give a good yield and often you have more than you can use and some to gift as well,” says Preeti. Nirmala, who is part of the same group as Preeti, says she wishes she had taken up urban farming earlier in life. “When I told my family that I was planning to grow vegetables at home, they raised a small storm. I told them that they could do with the flat what they wished but I owned the balcony. Today, I grow musk melons, brinjals, ajwain and mint on my own. I have seven tomato plants and there are over seven big lovelies growing on each of them. Chillies and tomatoes, we eat as much as we can and sometimes I have enough to give away as well,” Nirmala says. The 10 Guntha Project: Guntha is a traditional measure of land in Maharashtra. 40 gunthas make an acre. Shripad Dabholkar's critical analysis of the interaction between plants, sun light and physical organic requirements convinced him that 'modern' agriculture was wasteful and unprofitable, and therefore forbidding. If one were truly scientific, farming can be simple and profitable. Dabholkar called it Natu Eco [pronounced, 'natcheko'] farming. It is this knowledge that he took to the farmers of Maharashtra, to revolutionise grape and mango growing in small lots all across the state. One of his revolutionary beliefs was that a family of five can live well on 10 Gunthas or 1/4 acre. G.G. was a great friend of Dabholkar and sought him out to do something for poor Adivasis who are generally left to fend for themselves on marginal lands. After Dabholkar's death, his long-term disciple Deepak Suchde has been a passionate evangelist of Natu Eco farming. At the Yusuf Meherally Centre, Deepak Suchde, funded by the Dr Malpani Trust, has established a pilot 10-G project to demonstrate its premises. These can be summarised broadly as follows: § Almost any terrain can be farmed : roof-tops, barren rock and derelict land. All you need is access to a lot of biomass. Cow-dung, -urine and small quantity of jaggery are fermented for three days to get what is known as Amrit Pani in Natu Eco farming. Then green and dry crushed biomass is pickled in the Amrit Pani for a day or two. The drained mass, crawling with soil animals is layered with a little earth, wood ash from cooking and piled 1 foot high. In 45 days, this turns into sweet smelling nursery soil or Masala Mitti in Natu Eco. § Productive root system of plants and trees are only 10" deep. The deeper and wider root system you find in nature are for anchoring the plant. So, if you propped a plant, a foot of enriched soil [or, Masala Mitti] is enough. The plant produces physical material from sunlight and atmospheric carbon and nitrogen; only micro-nutrients are sought from the soil. § For optimum photosynthetic efficiency of plants and trees, luxurious canopies are unnecessary and only increase transpiration. Careful attention is paid to canopy management by considered trimming and pruning. § Per square foot of Natu Eco farm, only one litre of water is required for ten days. For 10-G or 10,000 sq.ft, water requirement is only 1,000 lpd. This can be harvested from rain, supplemented by intensive recycling of all gray water. § Apart from the initial setting-up cost, a Natu Eco farmer needs no cash to buy anyhing from outside. He can produce all grains, vegetables, fruits, herbs, oilseeds and fuel wood for a family of five and have surpluses to generate a small cash income. The 10-G plot designed by Deepak Suchde at Panvel, draws from Permaculture for lay-out, and adheres to Dabholkar's ideas in practice. Tall trees are planted along the edge, where a hedge of Vettiver prevents run-off of top soil. The !0-G are divided as follows: 1 G each for a family homestead; for workshop and stores; for cattle and chicken; for fruit trees; for paddy and other grains; for a nursery; for water storage; for cotton and fibres; for fast growing fuel wood. Half Guntha each are reserved for spices and oil seeds. The pilot at Panvel is just over a year old and already fruit and vegetables are regularly produced. The first attempt at growing rice was washed away by heavy rains. Paddy has been sown again. The entire soil was close to lateritic. Judiciously placed Masala Mitti piles are the bed on which all plants grow. No electricity is used. All watering is by hand. Even for paddy. Deepak Suchde has just started to develop a large parcel of land in Madhya Pradesh. He is available as a professional Natu Eco consultation. He can be contacted over his mobile [0-94224-43390] or email [deepak_suc...@rediffmail.com]. Dabholkar's definitive book 'Plenty For All' is available from Suchde, for Rs.450 each [-which includes postage within India]. Video CDs on the 10-G project are also available from him. Source forgotten
