How this NGO has transformed lives by creating job opportunities in Bharatpur

Bharatpur is synonymous with the bird sanctuary, aka a weekend getaway, to most of us. But there’s a lot more happening in the “eastern gateway to Rajasthan,” all thanks to the Lupin Human Welfare and Research Foundation (LHWRF).

The non-governmental organisation, supported by Lupin Limited, a transnational pharma company, has one aim - to allocate funds it gets from the government efficiently on a grass-root level.

The Lupin Human Welfare and Research Foundation was established by Dr Desh Bandhu Gupta, Founder of Lupin Limited, in October 1988, to help transform the rural landscape by creating sustainable and replicable economic, social, and infrastructural development programmes. It aims to do this by making people self-employed and improving their economic status.

An independent entity promoted by Lupin Limited, LHWRF works closely with central and state government departments and international organisations to achieve its objectives.

Bharatpur is considered to be the home of the foundation, as it is where the first centre was set up. It now has centres in 22 districts across nine states.

A link between towns and villages

The foundation has adopted a “Resurgent Village” concept of sustainable development by facilitating a tier of settlements between villages and towns. These settlements offer town-like amenities along with opportunities for non-agricultural employment.

Some of the key projects undertaken here include beekeeping, tulsi mala making, bangle making, and tailoring.

Sitaram Gupta, Executive Director of Lupin Human Welfare and Research Foundation, believes developing sustainable linkages between the government and the people for implementing various rural development programmes with an emphasis on economic development programmes (income generation programmes) for the poorest of the poor, marginalised sections of the society, youth, and women was “the way forward”.

“We wanted a replicable and ever-evolving model that could be adopted by other corporates or the government. There should be some message to district administrators. These were the tenets for this programme.”

Sitaram handles the integrated and holistic rural development activities in eight Indian states, including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, and Gujarat. He says:

Building on years of operation, Lupin has been able to develop distinct models of livelihood development and district development, which have the potential of being replicated in other backward regions. While the beginning of the centre was humble – it covered 33 villages in the first year of operation – it has grown visibly in terms of outreach. The Bharatpur centre now covers 1,836 villages across 33 blocks and five districts.

Lupin adopted around 25 villages in the initial years and identified one major problem that each village faced. It started with construction activities in partnership with the district administration to solve infrastructural issues, as most villages lacked basic facilities like schools, hospitals, etc.

“We found that the basic problem most villagers faced was of drinking water. We prepared a budget of Rs 33 lakh. The funds were arranged from the collector, Lupin, and from the villagers,” Sitaram says.

He added that the success of making drinking water accessible in all these villages gave villagers confidence in Lupin.

“This is how it all began, and slowly we started to enter into other fields such as health, education, etc.”

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Training programmes

The Resurgent Village concept of sustainable development also aims to help people with self-employment opportunities through various initiatives. Lupin has developed multi-skill training centres in all 10 blocks in Bharatpur.

This initiative is key in self-employment as it provides skills training to rural women, girls who have dropped out of school, and semi-skilled women in the field of tailoring, garment cutting and the fashion sector. Till now, women from villages around Bharatpur have completed two lakh orders for the textile industry, Sitaram says.

Suman Singh, 42, joined the Lupin Programme in 2013 as a trainer. Today, she has her own sewing machine centre and trains around 25 students. She gets orders from brands like Fabindia, Biba, and Srishti. She says she also gets orders from companies in Japan, Dubai, and Spain, and makes an annual profit of around Rs 5-7 lakh.

Her enterprise, Kirti Crafts, named after her 17-year-old daughter, had a turnover of about Rs 16 lakh last year, with a profit of about Rs 4 lakh.

Suman’s success story is something that many voluntary organisations hope to replicate through skill and entrepreneurial development efforts. 

Lupin’s multi-skill development centre also offers guard training, helping students become guards in corporates. The students undergo residential training, including includes drills and theory classes, for 33 working days. In the end, they are assessed and given certificates by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC).

The NGO also has computer literacy programmes where students are taught data entry and MS Excel skills among others. These certified courses, in English and Hindi, run in two batches of 20 people each for three months.

Bee keeping and farming

Apart from the training programmes, Lupin encourages farming techniques integrated with modern technologies and bee keeping. Farmers are, through workshops or sessions, encouraged to stay up-to-date with modern technologies and varied organic crops; the foundation also suggests what to cultivate with the help of research.

Over the years, the Rajasthan government has set up honey clusters and nominated the foundation to expand beekeeping to other parts of the state. Mustard fields provide very productive conditions for beekeeping — the output of honey in the three to four months of mustard flowering is about as much as the production in the rest of the year. For this, boxes are placed in the forest as well as in fields where other crops such as litchi are grown.

The foundation introduced beekeeping in Bharatpur in the early 1990s to provide livelihood to small and marginal farmers, landless labour, and unemployed youth. The foundation facilitated training, exposure visits, finance, and microfinance - through a partnership with SIDBI - for villagers at institutions like Hissar Agriculture University and collaborated with other beekeepers across the country.

Most beekeepers in Bharatpur now have Italian bees rather than indigenous species, as they are more productive.

Nearly 25 years since it was introduced, bee keeping has held Bharatpur in good stead. The town has emerged as a major producer of honey over the past few years, with around 3,000 farmers engaged in apiculture and three processing units operated by local players with support from Lupin.

The bee-keepers sell honey to these units, which processes and packs them for major brands, including Patanjali and Big Bazaar, as well as their own brand Bridge India.

About 70 percent of the income of marginal farmers comes from beekeeping; the balance 30 percent comes from agriculture.

Over the years, the Lupin Foundation, through its initiatives, has worked to make people self-employed and improve their income-generating capacity. And that is what it plans to continue doing.

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