Know who is Babulal Dahiya !

 Babulal Dahiya is a 76 year old farmer from Pithaurabad village in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh.

He is a postmaster turned farmer, for the betterment of society. He took the move to pull out society from the trap of the chemical grown fruits and vegetables.

He is a well known paddy farmer, famous for his experiments in this field, and including the folk theme in farming. 

Mr. Dahiya is also famous for environment conservation and social conversate in Madhya Pradesh.

 

Early life

He was born in the year 1954 in the village Pithaurabad of Satna district in the state Madhya Pradesh.

His childhood was spent in the Pithaurabad village. He completed his studies in local school. And he grew old to become a postmaster.

His half of the life passed doing the job of postmaster in the postal department. After retirement, he decided to do farming on his 8 acres of land.

From childhood only, he was keen to protect the environment. This conversing nature of him towards the environment made him fall for farming. He used his ancestral knowledge, and planned to implement it on his land.

He does organic farming on his 8 acres of land. Following to the ancestors' farming, he grew natural crops without the use of harmful chemicals.

He knew that it is very important to change the agricultural techniques.

Experiments

Babulal observed the vanishing varieties of rice and cereals locally. This made him think about the effect of modern agricultural practices that affected the crops.

These changes gradually reduced the quality of crops. So he decided to innovate crops that are of high quality, without compromising the cost and health of people.

Later after retirement, he focused on conserving rice species. He chooses rice species only at the start, because rice is consumed at major level locally.

During his farming work, he experimented with his seeds, plants and crops. He started with 10 species of rice. He sows the crops using the trial and error method.

He invented different varieties of seeds and planted them in his fields. He sows and studies them every year.

Mr. Babulal now has a collection of 110 varieties of native paddy. With every passing year his stock keeps on new seeds and plants keep on growing. He named the food grown as folk food, including folk song and folk culture.

His works came to light in the year 2015 when there was only 400 mm of rainfall. This was a very difficult time for farmers of the state, as they faced drought that destroyed crops.

But, to all surprise, the plants in Babulal fields had no effect of drought. There was no effect on his yield.

All the farmers got influenced with his works. They came to know how he managed to save his plants during the tough time.

He shared his experiments and practices with people interested in farming. He distributes his own seeds collection to the farmers all around.

During harvest he gets back new grains from those farmers. In this way both parties get benefited and grow in the world of farming.

Now, farmers from different villages near by his village cultivate paddy crops and coarse grains like kodo, kutki, jowar, and others with him.

He now conserves more than 80 varieties of rice species, including Desi makka, Sama, Kakun, Kutki, Kudo, and Katia wheat.

 

Achievements

He was awarded with the Padma Shri Award in the year 2019 for his experiments in farming.

In 2011, he received the Biodiversity Award from Madhya Pradesh State Biodiversity Board. He was honoured with the award for his contribution to the tribal and rural community of the state.

He also got appreciated by different institutes for his works in conversation of different paddy crops.

 

Passion  

He is a passionate farmer. Besides farming with folklife, he is also a poet.

He writes poems, and songs of local tribal festivals, rituals, customs and traditions.

He writes poems in Bagheli language and local dialects.

 

Social life

He is a very social, kind hearted person. Mr. Dahiya is also active on social media like facebook, to engage with people online.

Babulal knows that it is the time when people need to stay connected socially. And being with time with the society, he too is on social media.

This network helped him to stay in touch with the people even during the lockdown period.

He shares his work and writings on social media. He is a good fan of folk and wants to spread awareness of the vanishing culture of our society that needs to be protected.

Babulal tried to involve his passion for folk in his farming too. He conducted his experiments in farming with folklife.

 

Currently

He is still busy with his works of farming. His zeal for innovation in farming has not stopped yet.

For him, farming is the way through which he can serve people by growing healthy fruits and vegetables.

As we all know a healthy diet is important for a healthy life and mind, and it can only be accomplished by healthy eating.

So to get rid of the harmful chemicals used in farming and save other species of plants, Babulal Dahiya started an innovation in farming with his experiments.

Dahiya also works for a non-profit organisation Sarjana, Samajik Sanskratic Evam Sahityath Manch, Pithourabad, Satna,Madhya Pradesh.  

People supported him especially the Environment conservatives such as Paryavaran Mitra Project of the Centre for Environment Educator.

But, even after this success he is down to earth. For him, awards do not matter, but he is thankful for the recognition he got from the various institutions, the state and country.

Winding Words

This is a blog on Shri Babulal Dahiya, a famous Indian farmer from the state Madhya Pradesh.

He is a postmaster turned farmer, who brought a beautiful change in the world of farming. Using his knowledge and experiments he innovated different pulses. Also, saved them from vanishing by starting an organic way of farming.

We salute his efforts for his contribution in saving plants and people from degraded foods.