This not-for-profit organisation not only advocates for the rights and livelihoods of those inhabiting villages along the desert landscape of the Indo-Pakistan border in Rajasthan, but also addresses the challenges endured by the region’s local communities.
Established in 1994, Urmul Seemant Samiti, or USS, is a not-for-profit organisation helping people in villages in Rajasthan along the Indo-Pakistan border to ensure their rights to health, education, and employment. It stems from URMUL Trust, a group of independent organisations advocating for social and economic change in Rajasthan since 1988. ‘Seemant’—which literally translates from Hindi to ‘where borders end’—symbolises the organisation’s focus on the resilient topography of the desert and the unique challenges faced by its inhabitants, especially women and children.
With a legacy spanning over three decades, USS is guided by a bio-regional approach across all its interventions. These include agroecology, pastoralism, crafts, education, energy transitions, livelihoods, and climate resilience.
Key Areas of Work
Why We Love Urmul Seemant Samiti
• Building sustained relationships with the locals: USS works with local communities at every step of the way, addressing the challenges they face. For instance, Mahavir Singh, a farm head at USS, has been with the organisation since its inception. He started out as a driver, working closely with Self-Help Groups and distributing vaccines across Western Rajasthan. Today, he oversees farmland in Bikaner’s Bajju village, where USS grows fodder for the cattle.
• Community leadership and mobilisation: USS encourages locals to take on leadership roles, instilling a sense of independence among them while also encouraging them to try out new techniques that sustain their livelihoods. Ghee- and cheese-maker Gulab Singh, for instance, had never tried cheese before he learnt how to make it.
• Enriching the desert soil: Excessive use of chemical fertilisers and growing unsuitable crops like cotton, mustard, and wheat in the region has had adverse effects on the soil. If that weren’t challenging enough, USS also anticipates severe pressure on semi-arid and arid regions to produce more food because of erratic rainfall in other parts of India. Keeping the effects of the climate crisis in mind, USS is extremely cautious about using only natural inputs like carbon organic matter and slurry into the soil, which improves soil health.
How They Work
Timeline
1994 — Urmul Seemant Samiti was founded by Shri Arvind Ojha
1995-96 — Addressed a deadly malaria outbreak in Western Rajasthan
1997-98 — Encouraged local women to develop a source of income by establishing craft clusters
1994-2008 — Opened Balika Shivir, a girls’ education camp, enabling over 50,000 girls to rejoin formal education
2000 onwards— Right-based advocacy and public-fund utilisation for community models; strengthened government collaboration
2010 onwards — Shifted focus to developing livelihoods and encouraging entrepreneurship through food production, crafts, and fibre-based enterprises
2020 onwards — Launched two enterprises: Bahula Naturals and Samakhya
2024-25 — Tackling water scarcity and chemical toxicity in food, and enhancing sustainable livelihoods
How Does Urmul Seemant Samiti Support Livelihoods?
Active Projects: 5, including Regenerative Agriculture Programme, the promotion of micro-entrepreneurship, Bioregional Innovation Fund for Micro-Credit, innovations in education, and Kashida Handicrafts Programme
Number of Districts: 14
Number of Villages: 300–400, depending on the local communities’ needs
Number of Farmer Partners: More than 5,000
Social Enterprises: 2
Addressing Unique Challenges in the Desert
Over the past three decades, Urmul Seemant Samiti has worked closely with marginalised communities in 14 districts across Rajasthan, including Bikaner, Churu, Ganganagar, Jaisalmer, and Nagaur. Owing to their proximity to the Indo-Pakistan border, these semi-arid regions are often neglected and face unique challenges such as lack of medical and educational infrastructure, water scarcity, and declining pastoralism. Since the outset, USS has responded to these challenges with solutions specific to the region, time, and sphere they work in.
Currently, USS engages with over 30,000 households, including farmers, pastoralists, and artisans, who are integral to the food and textile production systems. At its heart, the organisation’s approach is rooted in inclusivity and co-creation. It is important for USS to not only address immediate challenges that marginalised communities face but also to help build long-term resilience in the region.
“I think the ability, space, and opportunity to make mistakes, learn from them, and then emerge stronger is intrinsic to our value system—and that is to do with the value system of this bio-region, and its people. They're okay with you making mistakes. They want you to fight back, they want you to come back, be more resilient. And that is what desert regions are all about, isn't it?”
Initially, USS focused on service delivery in areas lacking basic infrastructure, such as facilitating medical aid, distributing vaccines, transporting pregnant women to distant hospitals, setting up schools, and promoting education among young girls to reduce drop-out rate. Today, they also address water scarcity by constructing rainwater harvesting tanks called kunds during droughts, provide fodder to cattle, and tackle increasing toxicity in food production due to the use of chemicals in irrigated areas.
Managing Natural Resources
USS prioritises long-term, on-ground projects which help them build close relationships with the communities they work with, and adapt to their changing needs. According to Head of Desert Resource Centre, Anshul Ojha, change, especially at a grassroots level, cannot happen overnight.
As a community-based organisation, USS partners with various stakeholders to create scalable and sustainable models for resilience and development in the desert, while ensuring the continued involvement of local communities. In the 1990s, the organisation introduced a low-cost distributary covering model (Khala) along the Indira Gandhi Canal—which traverses seven districts of Rajasthan: Barmer, Bikaner, Churu, Hanumangarh, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, and Sriganganagar—to prevent sand encroachment and improve the delivery of water to tail-end farmers. They supported the resettlement of farmers, and provided input as well as mechanisation services to over 2,000 local families.
With this model, USS has helped restore more than 200 traditional water bodies, and installed rainwater harvesting systems in 130 anganwadis. Between 2000–2015, USS built water tanks for around 2,500 households in the Bikaner district. They also continue to provide marginalised communities with emergency water relief during droughts.
Building Sustainable Food Systems
In 2010, Urmul Seemant Samiti shifted their focus from service delivery and rights-based advocacy to promotion of micro-entrepreneurship and livelihood development, with an emphasis on food production.
A major priority for USS is to promote regenerative agroecology models viable for desert bio-regions by reducing the use of chemical inputs, and instead adopting natural and organic farming methods. Farming methods adopted after the Green Revolution—with the introduction of the Indira Gandhi Canal spanning seven districts in Rajasthan, completed in 2010—involved the cultivation of unsuitable crops like cotton, mustard, and wheat, with an excessive use of chemical fertilisers. To address these challenges, USS kickstarted their Sustainable Agriculture Program, through which they consciously advocate for chemical-free farming in these regions. In the next two years, USS hopes to work with at least 40,000 new farmers across Rajasthan to promote sustainable food production and improve soil health.
Inside Urmul Seemant Samiti’s Farmland in Bikaner
• Today, USS has farmlands spanning 25 bigha, or 15.5 acres, where they have installed a cow shed with 30–35 cows, and grow fodder for the cattle too.
• Soil health is improved by adding organic carbon matter to the arid, porous soil and by using slurry.
• Decentralised food production systems, such as small-scale oil mills, can ensure better quality control in food production.
•Basic support like biogas installation helps reduce the use of chemical inputs, resulting in better produce. The biogas is then used in the mess and kitchen operated by USS.
USS actively invests in solar-based infrastructure for food production, processing, and collection to promote clean energy; contributes to state-level policies on camel milk; and helps communities in the desert collaborate by sharing practices and lessons from one region to another.
Pastoral Food Production
Since 2016, Urmul Seemant Samiti’s work has largely revolved around pastoral food production and farm-based production systems. Pastoral communities in Western Rajasthan have long been rearing camels, but with grazing areas being fenced off owing to development projects and a decline in camel population, their way of life is becoming increasingly rare. Shrinking grasslands also means reduced fodder for the animals, which adversely impacts the quality of milk and meat.
For many, camel milk is an acquired taste. Urmul Seemant Samiti is attempting to make it more palatable by encouraging pastoralists to use camel milk to make products like ghee and cheese. Gulab Singh, who settled in Bikaner—about 145 kilometres away from the Indo-Pakistan border—right after Partition, is one such farmer. “Making products from camel milk is an art of the hand. It takes time and patience,” he says.
Urmul’s dairy initiative currently supports 2,500 pastoral families. To encourage entrepreneurship within the community, especially among women and the youth, as well as ensure sustained income for marginalised groups, USS helps set up enterprises, and promote innovative products made from camel milk and pastoral fibre, or fibres obtained from livestock. Currently, they promote two social enterprises: Bahula Naturals, a community-owned pastoral milk brand endorsing camel conservation and sustainable dairy, and Samakhya, a collective working with textiles and pastoral fibres. The aim is to focus on building sustainable food systems while ensuring traceability, fair value, and encouraging market linkages, where the products made by these enterprises are sold in local as well as urban markets.
How You Can Help
One of the major challenges confronting Urmul Seemant Samiti is mobilising funds. Due to the difficulty of access to the region, especially for urban citizens, crowdfunding and institutional funding can be hard to come by. If you would like to contribute through donations, you can reach out to them via their website or on social media.
This story is part of our Organisation Partnership Program. At The Locavore, we strive to keep the practices of an organisation transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
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