Deep Roots

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Creating an oasis in rice: the women

farmers of Nagwa Village, Uttar Pradesh

Lanie Reyes, International Rice Research Institute

car can usually travel down the narrow concrete

road in Nagwa Village of Maharanjganj district

in eastern Uttar Pradesh. However, during this

second week of November – harvest time in the fields

surrounding the village – piles of rice straw clogged the

way, making passage virtually impossible.

Most of the women, including Prabhawati Devi, were busy

cutting the straw and piling it neatly on jute sacks that were

cut open to serve as mats for the straw. As she was gathering

the edges of the stalks, Mrs Devi said with a smile, “These

are Sahbhagi.” Sahbhagi is what the farmers and villagers

call Sahbhagi dhan, a drought-tolerant rice variety released

in India in 2009.

The straw of Sahbhagi dhan is popular

among the women in Nagwa, who feed it to their cattle.

Brick and mud houses, scattered along the road of Nagwa,

are not big enough to shield from view the residents inside

as they go about their daily chores. One woman was cooking

just inside her front door, squinting under the almost-

midday sun and shielding her eyes with her hands from the

smoke of the burning fuelwood. Outside her house, another

woman was threshing rice manually – raising her arms as

high as she could as she smashed a bunch of rice stalks on a

surface covered with fine mesh net. She gathered the sepa-

rated grains with her hands, placing the grains at the centre

of the net and putting the empty stalks neatly to her side. She

rose once in a while to straighten her back from her squat-

ting position. Yet another woman had just returned from

harvesting rice bundles in the field. Women often harvest

rice in staggered shifts because they want to give the fresh

rice stalks to their cattle.

Nagwa looked like a village of women in a flurry of activi-

ties. Their bright saris made them more visible under the

scorching sun.

As more men migrate from rural areas to the cities, women take on the

farming activities they leave behind

Studies show that women contribute 60-80 per cent of the labour

required in rice farming

Image: IRRI

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