Role of MARI in promotion of farmers' cooperative in Telangana.

1. MODERN ARCHITECTS FOR RURAL INDIA

2. MARI has a vision of empowering the vulnerable
sections of the society to fight against poverty, injustice
and environmental degradation that is threatening
their basic livelihoods. This process should lead to
establishing conditions in favour of sustainable
development of the poor and marginalized sections
and ultimately of the society.

3. The mission therefore is to promote strong
community based organizations of the poor and
disadvantaged, enabling them to mobilize resources
from within, government and other agencies and
guide them to work towards development that is
sustainable in longer run.

4. MARI’s approach is to create an enabling environment
for the community to take control of their resources
and initiate process of change for betterment. MARI
functions in a truly democratic, decentralized and
non-discriminative way and transfer similar values to
the community based organizations (CBOs); and to
facilitate effective collective action.

5. • Equity
• Gender sensitive
• Democratic decision making
• Accountability and Transparency
• Adherence to laws of the land
• Convergence for getting more value for money spent
and sustainability

6. • Informal organizations such as women self help groups
• Cooperative societies of farmers, women self help groups
• Federations
• Companies, especially Farmers’ Producer Companies
• Project based groups such as Child Protection Committees,
etc.

7. • Formation of village level groups
• Village level groups electing leaders to act as Cooperative
Society Directors
• Directors electing different functionaries such as
president, vice president, secretary, joint secretary,
treasurer and others will be part of Board of directors

8. • Conduct regular meetings at the Village level under
the leadership of director and chalk out their needs
and action required from the society
• Director acts as link between the village level
members and represents their requirements and
needs.
• Society meets regularly, at least once in a month and
takes decisions on funds available, works to be done,
work of the staff, convergence needs, etc.
• Sub committees formed for effective functioning

9. • Resources essential for sustainable functioning.
• Mobilized Share holders contributions
• Collecting 50% cost from farmers on inputs supplied
from the respective projects
• Developing income sources such as input supplies to
farmers
• Taking up paddy procurement centres

10. • Reduced cost of cultivation
• Promoted best management practices in cotton and
reduced the risk of farmers’ suicides.
• Developed alternative livelihoods
• Promoted production of better cotton where no
prohibited chemicals are used, grown in suitable
lands only, where no child labour is involved, equal
wages for men and women, etc.
•All 15 cooperative societies have a total corpus of
• Rs.35 millions

11. • Convergence links established with Departments of
Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry, Banks, State
Marketing Federation, Micro Irrigation Department, etc.
• For the year totally over 20000 farmers organized into 400
Learning Groups and 1800 Joint Liability Groups.
• Watershed cooperative societies (12) facilitated increase in
ground water level by over 4 meters, brought about 5000
Hectares of waste land into cultivation, reduced migration
of farmers from their own villages, etc.

13. Some more glimpses

14. General Body Meeting and other photographs

16. Miles to go before we sleep…