Our main activity is to provide consultancy to common people at their doorsteps on various rural enterprises such as goat farming, fish farming, bee farming, sweet water pearl farming, silk farming and handicrafts production. This is an attempt to bridge the knowledge gap between the scientists and experts on the one hand and farmers and primary producers on the other. We stand firm with small producers all along their production chain. We have adopted the stall fed goat-farming as our flagship programme, because there is a huge gap between demand and supply of meat in domestic market as well as large scope for export. Goat-farming does not require electricity and it’s a low capital venture. In order to reach out to the common people we have distributed leaflets and pamphlets in public gatherings and cattle fairs and organised meetings in several villages, blocks and district headquarters. We have received enthusiastic response from some areas of Bihar such as Barh, Samastipur, Darbhanga, Nawada, and Araria. We are coordinating Krishi Vigyan Kendras in Bihar. We have developed four schemes suitable to different sections of society. First scheme (Bronze Scheme) is for BPL families organised in Self Help Groups. Each member of the SHG will keep 4 to 8 goats and therefore each SHG will have 40 - 80 goats. The second scheme (Silver Scheme) is basically a test scheme, which promotes people to start goat farming with just 10 goats and if they find it profitable then they may go for larger units. Third one (Golden Scheme) would start with 40 goats and 2 bucks. This is also closer to NABARD scheme of goat farming. The last one (Diamond Scheme) would be taken up by resourceful people, which would start with 120 does and 6 bucks. We help all these groups to solve the problems related to good farm management practices. We are also working on the development of a handicraft cluster at Madhubani. Mithila painting is a known form of traditional art. We have developed a model of cluster development which addresses the main problems like absence of capital, exposure to new trends, access to market and obviously the middleman. Our model is more integrating for instance it does not expel the middlemen completely, but we provide them with a role in the process. Our effort is to include products for home furnishing, glass works, gift items apart from usual paintings done on Sarees and other garments. We have started with Self Help Groups and we sell their products in exhibitions organised outside the state. We are developing a catalogue of Mithila painting artists to facilitate better and faster interface with sourcing and buying agencies globally.
