Creating employment opportunities for migrants to re-build lives after lockdowns

Summary

Madhubani District in Bihar has historically been riddled with challenges like low agricultural yield, frequent flooding and droughts. It had forced a large population to work as migrant labourers outside the state. Families with not enough land for traditional agriculture usually take out loans from local money-lenders at extremely high interest rate in order to be able to afford migration to cities like Mumbai and Delhi, as that is the only source of livelihood accessible to them. With the onset of the pandemic, migrant workers have returned home to Madhepur and Jhanjharpur blocks of Madhubani district but they are finding themselves without a regular source of income for over a year now.

Forty-year-old Abdul Razzak of Bagahi was working in Mumbai in a textile mill, after returning to village he has tried getting wage-based work in nearby towns as well as Patna, but he has been unsuccessful in finding work that pays a sufficient wage regularly. 

Such sentiments are shared by Ram Sutar, thirty-five-year old sole bread earner of a family of four. He managed to return to his village on foot from Delhi after the construction site he was working on had to shut down. 

Ramadhin Sadai tried looking for wage based work in Patna after returning to Bihar from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh in 2020. However, because of a devastating second wave, small businesses have had to shut down again, Ramadhin’s family, with a debt of Rs 25000, is on the brink of destitution.

Migrant workers’ plight across the country has been severe since the beginning of the pandemic in March, 2020. In the specific case of Madhubani, Bihar existing vulnerabilities, mounting debt, historical difficulties in traditional agriculture practices, and lack of any employment opportunities in the local economy, have created severe food insecurity and in general a bleak, hopeless situation. Creating sustainable and permanent livelihood opportunities at the villages is an immediate need. INDIAdonates and its partner Manav Vikas Sansthan (MVS) are working with 100 of the most vulnerable and resource poor families of migrant workers to provide them with regular income through mushroom farming.

Mushroom is emerging as a super food across the country, with a high profit margin, marginal investment, and a yield turn-around time of 45 days. It can be easily cultivated in any designated space of 100 sq ft, without major land investment and is resilient to weather conditions.  Every contribution towards the project will help the beneficiaries to

• Receive extensive trainings on mushroom farming by experts at regular interval
• Engage in farming button mushroom and oyster mushroom farming in 7 crop cycles throughout the year
• Secure raw materials and equipment to create the compost bed necessary for mushroom farming, for the first crop cycle
• Create market linkages at local grocery stores and at weekly markets as well as at eateries in nearby towns
• Make them sustainable to invest their income towards raw materials and equipment, after the first crop cycle 

In each crop cycle (7 crop cycles in a year), every beneficiary will be making a profit of INR 5500 to 6000 creating an annual income of approximately INR 40,000.