NCL-Aided Project Lights Up Lives Of Tribals

Singrauli (Madhya Pradesh): The Singrauli Women Small Holders’ Poultry Project -- the CSR initiative of Coal India subsidiary Northern Coalfields Ltd (NCL) -- has benefitted 750 tribal families residing around the operational area of the miniratna firm.

The project, which started in 2015, has grown over the years, and with it, more women living in the country’s energy hub of Sangrauli have benefitted. Inti Devi, a beneficiary of the project remembered how it changed her life.

In a conversation with PTI, she said after the death of her husband, she would travel 22 km barefoot everyday leaving her five young children in her shanty only to earn a paltry Rs40 per day. But her fate changed after she became a part of the Singrauli Women Small Holders’ Poultry Project. “After becoming a part of this project, my troubles ended.

I earn quite well now and have even married off my elder daughter,” Devi, now the President of Singrauli Women Small Holders’ Poultry Project, said. Small holder community poultry model helps poor women in rural India to start and run poultry enterprises. Based on this model, the Singrauli Women Small Holders Poultry Project was initiated in which 750 units of poultry farms have been established as one entity -- Singrauli Women Poultry ProduceRsCompany Ltd.

The total cost of this project is Rs8.75 crore. In the first phase, 500 units were established till 2019-20 and further the project was scaled up with the addition of 250 units in the last four years. The project, which is operational in 16 villages, saw a total turnover of Rs18 crore in 2023-24. A member reaRs6-7 batches of chicken a year, and members earn annual incomes of Rs35,000-45,000 from a shed of 500 chickens.