Maharashtra’s prison department has started an initiative to introduce modern farm equipment into prison farming, a key part of the correctional ecosystem. Officials have said the modernisation will not only help inmates train on the implements but also increase the prisons’ agricultural productivity.
On January 25, the home department sanctioned funds for the procurement of various machinery and equipment for the Yerawada central prison, the Buldhana district prison and the open prisons in Yerawada, Pathan, Nashik Road, Nagpur, Morshi, Visapur, Kolhapur and Ratnagiri. The equipment includes power tillers, cultivators, ploughing and sowing machinery, rotavators, mechanised equipment used for yielding, submersible pumps, and seed and fertiliser drills.
The state has 60 prisons, which include nine high-security central prisons, 19 open prisons, 31 district prisons and one open jail colony. As many as 31 prisons conduct year-round agriculture activities for inmates and produce vegetables, foodgrains and fruit. They also have animal husbandry activities as well as dairy and poultry farming. They collectively have 596 hectares of agricultural land, which includes 188 hectares of irrigated land, 144 hectares of rainfed farmland. The yearly agriculture production from the prisons is to the tune of Rs 5 crore.
Additional director-general of police Amitabh Gupta said, “We plan to introduce a lot of modernisation and innovations into prison agriculture in the coming months. Agriculture is a key activity in the prison correctional ecosystem and the aim is to make sure that endeavour trains the inmates for present-day farming.”
Around 900 inmates–50 of them women–are employed daily in prison agriculture activities. Rajaram Kharat, technical officer (prison agriculture), said, “The introduction of state-of-the-art farming equipment will help train the inmates in modern mechanisation-intensive agriculture. The skill sets acquired here will help them get a better chance of employment and earning livelihood through agriculture on their release. This will also increase the productivity of prison agriculture, which in most of the cases, is done with organic methods.”
Officials said that like in all other prison industrial and manufacturing units, inmates employed in agriculture get daily wages and this contributes to their record for remission in their sentencing.
Officials said that a large chunk of the produce is used by the inmates themselves. When there is excess production, the fruit and vegetables are sold in the local markets through the agriculture produce marketing committees.
The inmates cultivate foodgrains, pulses, oilseeds, fruit and leafy vegetables during kharif, rabbi and summer seasons. Some prisons have started cultivating sugarcane and selling it to sugar mills or jaggery production units.
The grassland and agro forestry land owned by prisons is used for the cultivation of fodder for dairy and goat-rearing units.
Prisons also have 80,000 trees of teakwood, babhul, seesam and nilgiri as well as over 5,000 trees bearing mangoes, tamarind, coconut, guava and gooseberries on their premises. Some prisons have undertaken sandalwood plantation and banana farming in the recent past.
