BIHAR: Two decades ago, Bihar’s Rohtas district was a stronghold of the leftwing extremists. The situation was so bad that the medieval fort built by Sher Shah Suri had become their undisputed power centre. Extortions – at one point in the mid-2000s had reached Rs 1,500 crore annually – and killings in the name of a useless movement were so rampant that the writ of the state of Bihar was seriously threatened. In this situation, Ritesh Kumar Pandey left Rohtas vowing never to return. Yet, you never forget the town where you spent your childhood years.
Pandey returned to his village in 2010 after more than six years, convinced things had changed, and if they hadn’t much, he would make some efforts to change them. Pandey brought with him some expertise in fish farming. Today he has taken his initiative to not only his home district but also as far as Agartala, Hyderabad, Gangtok, Assam, Uttarakhand and even Myanmar and Nepal. He trains farmers in fish farming.
Recounting those horrible days of Maoist threats and violence, Pandey says their activities peaked in the mid-1990s. “They would threaten us to either leave farming or give them a share of our income. Their other demands also included providing food to their cadres when they visited our house.”
The Pandey family moved to Lucknow where his brother-in-law worked in a research institute. “Rebooting life in a new city was not easy. But our family, including my parents, three brothers and a sister, stood firm,” he says. “I took admission in a computer course and joined a job. In 2005, I was married,” he added.
“My mother was somehow not very convinced what we were doing in Lucknow and always wanted to return to our Bandu village as the ancestral house also required immediate repair,” says Pandey. So the family returned. “I wasn’t calm there. I once found myself nearly in the crossfire between the Maoists and the security forces,” he says.
The situation started improving after IPS officer Manu Maharaj was posted as Rohtas SP. The Pandeys started cultivating medicinal plants at his farmhouse, situated on the Amarkha hills, a part of Kaimur plateau in Rohtas district. When he was in Lucknow, he had taken training at the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants where his brother-in-law was working as a scientist.As there was no irrigation facility, he depended on drip irrigation and sprinkler. “The land lay barren for years. We had to make it fertile. That required a lot of work,” says Pandey.
He took up fish farming a few months after his return and suffered a big loss. Today, farmers not only from Bihar but also from Palamu and Garhwa districts in Jharkhand and Sonbhadra in Uttar Pradesh visit him to learn new methods of cultivation and fish farming.
Pandey says one day, a former block pramukh Sudama Chero approached him to know how he was cultivating medicinal plants in water-starved land. Pandey’s micro-irrigation system was provided by the horticulture department, while locals and acquaintances in Lucknow made donations for cultivating medicinal plants.
Pandey thanks Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Vikramganj for their massive support to him in the beginning. “An R&D unit has helped us to launch fish feed supplements under 14 various brands, which we supply across the country.”
He will also be exporting bio-based fish feed and pond cleaning supplements to the US and Canada. Pandey is now earning around `1-1.5 crore per year after years of hard work. He has fixed his target to over `50 crore in the next five years. Pandey has planned to launch ‘Machhali-Bhat Yojana’ to provide fish and rice to the people at cheaper rates. He said that the scheme would be launched in Siliguri in West Bengal by early next year.
HARD WORK PAYS OFF FINALLY
Ritesh Kumar Pandey is now earning around Rs 1-1.5 crore per year after years of hard work. He has fixed his target to over Rs 50 crore in the next five years. He also plans to launch a ‘Machhali-Bhat Yojana’ to provide fish and rice to people at cheaper rates