A Women Farmers Collective Is Hosting Change in Himalayan Villages

In Silkoti village, Tehri district, Uttrakhand, Vimla Pundeer grows peas, spinach, barley, lemons, peaches, apples, and apricots on terraced farms, and runs a two-room homestay from her house. Two decades ago, she was spending more than 10 hours a day on water collection alone. Ecological degradation had caused the local springs to dry up. With male outmigration, the burden of managing failing farms, orchards, livestock, and accessing water resources all fell on the women.

The Him Vikas Swayatt Sahkarita, a Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO), trained women across self-help groups in Chamba in spring rejuvenation through contour trenching and recharge pits, introduced new seed varieties and organic practices, and set up a Kisan Suvidha Kendra. It also helped establish 25 women-run homestays and a nature guide programme. The springs rejuvenated with their collective efforts, thereby enabling farming and tourism.

“We saved water the way people save money in a bank,” says Vasu Devi, who now leads tourists along the forest trails she once walked with headloads of fodder and water. The article is careful not to frame this as a simple success story. Sulochana Ramola, who cooks at the FPO’s Nathuli Café, identifies as a farmer but owns no land. Her husband receives the PM-Kisan subsidy because the land is in his name. Severe back pain from decades of farm and livestock work forced her to give up buffalo rearing. Among the women interviewed, only one owns land, transferred to her after her husband’s death. The structural contradiction of women like Sulochana, who built the collective, revived the water supply, and now run the tourism economy—continuing to labour without land ownership—exemplifies the condition of women farmers.