Vaagdhara

Vaagdhara works with marginalised communities in Vagad, the tribal borderland where Rajasthan meets Gujarat. The association has worked across 1,168 villages in this region for over two decades with various tribal communities like the Bhils who experience ecological precarity, caste exclusion, and agricultural crisis in western India. Its organising philosophy is Gandhian in essence (Swaraj or self-reliance), but applied to concrete, present-day struggles over agricultural resources and who controls them. Its organisational philosophy, gathered under the banner of ‘Sacchi Kheti’ or ‘True Farming’, centres circular farming practices, composting, seed sovereignty, and the revival of indigenous crop knowledge as a bulwark against debt-driven dependence on chemical inputs. Women’s leadership runs through its programmes such as the Mrida Evam Khad Swaraj initiative on soil health led by rural women and the Beej Utsav seed festivals that treat seed-keeping as both an ecological practice and a political act.