Gender Specific Interventions to Mitigate Drudgery While Performing Farm Operations: A Brief Study

Agriculture in India is moving away from animal driven to machine driven. Apart from tractors and power weeders which are used by farmers, there are farm tools and implements that can be used by farm women to reduce their drudgery with increased productivity. The objective of the study was to explore the interventions to reduce drudgery and occupational hazards caused while executing the farm operations. In this regard, the present study made an attempt in introducing the set of 15 drudgery reducing farm tools and implements i.e. sapling transplanter, sickle/kurpi, long handle weeders, three types of harvest bags, ring cutter, finger guards, milking stand cum stool, head load manager, seed cum fertilizer bag, seed placement tube, cotton picker and fertilizer broad caster. A capacity building training programme was conducted to the farm women for exposure about the improved set of farm tools and implements. The implements were given to village secretary for use of this equipment by a group of 50 farm women and data were collected from them regarding the awareness about the technologies before and after the capacity building training programmes. Adoption levels were assessed after completion of a crop season. It was found that partial awareness was there about the improved equipment before training and cent per cent awareness was in the random selected group after the training programs. About 62 per cent of the sample has moderately adopted the given technologies. The study indicated for educating the farmers about the importance of drudgery reducing technologies, training them in using the farm implements and providing them to have an easy accessibility to enhance the adoption level. Custom hiring centres can be the solution to house the improved technologies suitable for farm women so that they can be used on rotation basis.