FPO’s bright idea for Dasara festival

Anantapur: Women of Kuderu and Kalyandurg mandals of Anantapur district set an example of cooperation among themselves to reduce their monthly expenditure during the upcoming festivities by designing ‘Dasara Kit’, including all essentials.

580 members of Kuderu Mandala Rythu Utpathi Darula Paraspara Sahayaka Sahakara Sangam Limited led by M Akkamma and 880 members of Kalyanadurg mandala Rythu Utpathi Darula Paraspara Sahayaka Sahakara Sangam Limited led by H Durgamma, have launched a pilot project ‘Dasara Kit’ of essentials with support from Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre, Anantapur.

They devised a new initiative to sell ‘Dasara Kit’, containing 16 different items at just Rs 700 to the shareholders of 14 Farmer Producer Organisations. In the first phase, they prepared 1,500 kits spending Rs 14 lakh and with a small margin of Rs 40,000 for the FPOs.

The kit contains a pre-mix of ready-to-cook multi-grain millets-based sweet meal, a pack of chikkis, millet cookies, sugar, wheat flour, upma rava, red gram, jaggery, Bengal gram, Bengal gram powder, two soaps, shampoo, toothpaste, turmeric, jeera, and mustard, at a rate of Rs 700 for the shareholders and Rs 750 for others in the village. Board Directors and Chief Executive Officers of all the FPOs coordinated and purchased one item each at the lowest possible price from the wholesale market and packed them into small kits so that the FPOs recover their cost and shareholders get all these at 20% below the retail market price.

The programme was formally launched by Raptadu Mandala Rythu Utpatti Darula Paraspara Sahayaka Sahakara Sangam Ltd., chairperson Anuradha and BoD Anjanamma on October 2, by selling the first kit to AF Ecology Centre Director YV Malla Reddy. Anuradha said they are planning to prepare another 3,000 during this festive period till Diwali as there was heavy demand for the kits from several people in all the villages.