Lal Muni Devi & Kiran Devi - Bihar

Today I am mentioning stories of two very-very common women of Bihar: Lal Muni & Kiran, The common link between them is that both of them are from near around Patna.

Bihar may be the poorest state till date, but its people are wonderfully talented since ages. Some of the stories of individual successes perplex one raising obvious question, ‘why is then the state so poorly placed on the development index?’

Lets Start with Lal Muni Devi :: For Lal Muni Devi, the challenge was to survive on her farming skills without having any land of her own to plough. So the poor, uneducated woman from Azad Nagar village in Patna district used her dank, thatched house to grow mushrooms. And now she is in a Mexican gallery of top farmers from Asia. A photograph of Lal Muni and the story of her achievement have been put on the website of CIMMYT (http://www.cimmyt.org/english/wps/news/2006/feb/whats_wheat.htm), a well-known Mexican institute engaged in research for improvement of maize and wheat crop.

Lal Muni Devi finds mention as an inspirational farmer among 25 from seven Asian countries.

“I have heard that my photo has been published in America. I want to see it,” said Lal Muni, who wanted to know how she could go to America to see her photo.

Till four years back, Lal Muni used to work for other farmers as a daily labourer. Then instructors from Indian Institute for Agricultural Research (ICAR) brought together 25 women from the village and taught them how to grow mushrooms.

Lal Muni says what made her happy was that she did not need any land to grow mushrooms, a plant she had never even heard of till the ICRA training. It also helped that market was easily available in nearby Patna city.

“I learnt that I could grow mushrooms them in my house and later found that they earned good profit too,” she says with a broad smile. The reason why she got a compliment from a wheat-promotion agency is that balls of wheat husk are used for growing the mushrooms. Packed in plastic bags, the balls hang in rows under her thatched roof, nourishing the oyster mushroom shoots in the humid setting.

For the first two years, ICAR provided free seeds but now the women buy it at Rs 60 a kg.

“One kilogram of seed yields 10-14 kg of mushroom. The winter variety sells at Rs 50-60 per kg while in summer they get Rs 80-120,” said A R Khan, principal scientist at ICAR in Patna.

It takes just three months for the crop to be ready and it can be grown round the year with a little bit of care.

But of the 25 women, at least half quit after ICAR stopped providing free seeds. “I had left growing the mushrooms, but I will now start again and become like Lal Muni,” says Nirmala Devi of the same village.

Many men from the village are also picking up farming after seeing the price mushrooms fetch. Khan said recently a team from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation came to Azad Nagar to meet Lal Muni and other farmers. The foundation run by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has shown interest in agricultural projects in the state that target poor farmers.



Meet Lal Muni Devi





Now the story of Kiran Devi

Kiran is another woman with the manly guts. She came from a poor background. Kiran started with a teashop, but today Kiran is in business of junk selling in Patna. As usual, the profession requires guts to deal with the people with whom she is to deal. The business flourished and now Kiran also owns a number of rickshaws too and get them plied on rental. This business also requires tough handling, but Kiran has plenty of that. Kiran has now found a place in the new Class IV math textbook from National Council of Educational Research and training (NCERT) that is all about math and real life.