Basodih Mahila Farmer Producer Company Limited

We are a group of women farmers from Tamoriya village in the Satgawan area of Koderma. Kranti Devi’s home is where we get together for Basodih Mahila Farmer Producer Company Limited. This part of Jharkhand is quite remote, and getting things done can be a challenge. We started this because the women here do a lot of the farm work but rarely have a say in the money part. By forming this company, we are trying to change that. We grow various crops and sometimes collect forest produce, depending on the time of year. Koderma has its own set of difficulties with the soil and the terrain. We spend our days out in the fields and our evenings talking about how to get our produce to the bigger markets. It’s not easy when you don't have your own transport. We often have to rely on whatever trucks are passing through. Our meetings are informal, usually sitting on the floor and going over our small accounts. We aren't experts in law or finance, just women who know the land. We make mistakes with the paperwork sometimes, and the government rules can be confusing. But we keep going because we want something better for our village. It’s a very local effort. No one here is getting rich, we are just making sure we can keep our homes and farms running. We hope our children will have an easier time than we did.