CSR Success Stories

Nallaswamy (Trichy, Tamil Nadu)

Nallaswamy : doubling of faming income through knowledge sharing and facilitation

Nallaswamy lives in Keelarasur Village of Pullambadi Block in Trichy District of Tamil Nadu. He owns 5 acres of land and has an open-well to irrigate his field. Due to lack of resources, all he was able to irrigate was one-fifth of his land to cultivate Chilly. His crop on the remaining 4 acres of land was fully rain-fed. Therefore, he had no choice but to opt for less remunerative crops like cotton and maize.

His income from this reasonably large area of land wasn’t good enough for his family of 5 to live a quality life. The failed rains would often necessitate him to pick up menial jobs like that of a daily wage worker. While Nallaswamy was going through the mill as a farmer, he attending a community meeting conducted by Dalmia Bharat Foundation (DBF) in his village. Incidentally, this meeting was meant to inform small and marginal farmers about an irrigation project of the Government of Tamil Nadu that was based on Solar Pumping. The scheme offered a subsidy of Rs. 2.85 lakhs to each eligible farmer. Nallaswamy saw this as a big opportunity and sought DBF’s help to avail the benefit of this scheme

DBF did not just help him complete all the formalities to submit his application to the Government, but also followed it up with them to ensure an early approval of his case. Soon, a 5 HP solar powered irrigation pump was sanctioned to Nallaswamy and installed on his well. It turned out to be a game changer. Now that he could irrigate his entire field, he migrated to more rewarding crops like onion and sugarcane, the latter being irrigated using the drip-irrigation method.

With his income increasing two times, an elated Nallaswamy says, “solar-powered irrigation has safeguarded productive usage of my entire field. The drip irrigation has helped me not just conserve water, but I have noticed a significant increase in the yield as well. I thank Dalmia Bharat Foundation for standing by me and making me achieve this”.