How Women Farmers in the Sundarban Are Reviving Indigenous Rice Varieties

Sundarban (West Bengal): When Barnali Dhara, 50, stepped into her husband’s chemical fertiliser shop in Nischintapur, a locality in the Indian Sundarban, she was only trying to help her husband, who had got a job as a school teacher.

A store that sells chemical fertilisers – in Sundarban and elsewhere – is often a place where farmers meet and decide, at times together, which seed and which fertiliser to buy. In the Indian Sundarban, located in West Bengal, paddy is the main crop. Women work as much in the fields as men, if not more, but the decision of whether to buy hybrid, high-yielding paddy seeds and chemical fertilisers rests with the men.

Dhara knew that when she began to manage the shop in 2005. “I came from a Sundarban family of farmers, who were also teachers,” she says. She had passed the higher secondary (Class 12) board examination.

What she did not know was that after 12 years in the shop, her life would take a sharp turn.