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Over 12 months, we interviewed 30 couples to better understand the challenges facing smallholder farmers today. This is the sixth in a series of blogs based on those interviews. Names and faces have been changed to protect privacy. Photo has been AI generated.

At age 38, Aanya is a mother, a wife, a sharecropper, and an ASHA worker living in the rural village of Derhgawan, Uttar Pradesh in India. Most ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers are women from remote villages just like Aanya, between the ages of 25-45, with at least a class eight education (Aanya has completed class nine).

According to India’s Ministry of Health, ASHA workers are the “first port of call” to specifically meet health-related needs of women and children in rural areas where medical help may not be readily available. ASHA workers are health advocates - not medically trained - and are paid per service. In her role as ASHA worker, Aanya could help transport women to hospitals for safer deliveries, help children get immunized, conduct home visits for nursing mothers and babies, teach and support family planning, and provide basic medical and hygiene supplies, among other things.

It’s a sizable responsibility and honor for Aanya, as ASHA workers are chosen only after approval from a rigorous selection committee. “I was successful in getting this job of ASHA worker, which helps me to cover expenses to some extent,” Aanya explains. She uses her earnings from ASHA work to pay school fees for her children, but finds it hard to strike the right balance between fieldwork (ASHA) and farmwork, especially when ASHA work is sporadic. Aanya said she typically works about three hours a day as an ASHA worker, but there have been times when she goes months without an assignment (or the extra income that comes with each task). When she does have ASHA work, the farmwork suffers. “Definitely it leads to losses, because in the morning if I go to the farm, the fieldwork gets compromised, and if I do fieldwork then farming work gets compromised,” she says.

Aanya continues, “It is not possible for me to carry out both responsibilities. Sometimes if I get an urgent phone call the night before and have to leave the next morning, then the (house and farm) work which needs to be done in the morning gets compromised. So that becomes a problem. Sometimes I don't have time to have meals. My daughter cooks the food then but I end up staying hungry.” Aanya’s workload is compounded by the fact that her husband, Dhruv, 46, has a bad leg that requires her to give him additional care and assume many of his household responsibilities on top of her own.

But the farmwork must continue, and Dhruv works as much as he can as a sharecropper on his uncle’s land, an average of 4-5 hours per day. When asked if he was proud to be a farmer, Dhruv shrugs, “To a small degree. If I had more land, then I would have been more proud.” Dhruv and Aanya both report very low satisfaction with the amount of control they have over the work they do on the farm. “I’ll do whatever I can get,” says Dhruv, when asked if he would consider work other than agriculture.

With a combined monthly income around 7,500 rupees, they say they always have enough to eat, but not always the variety or type of food they prefer. Aanya managed to put away 2,000 rupees in savings one month, but worries that there is not enough money to adequately provide for their children’s futures. “If we don’t have money, where will we get it? We couldn’t even build a latrine or bathroom at home,” she says. “There’s no money to educate the children. If the children can’t study, how will they progress? Dhruv concurs, “The boys aren’t able to study properly due to lack of money, and there’s also the issue of the girls’ marriages, which worries me.”

Even with Aanya supplementing their earnings with ASHA paychecks, they rely on the farm to provide food for the family and the majority of the couple’s income. They both belong to their local FPO (Baankelal Bio Energy or “BBE”), which sometimes provides them with seeds and manure.

Aanya has mixed feelings about the FPO. “It is not because of the meetings but because of the goods that people are willing to join,“ she says, adding that while women are not overtly disrespected, they are often overlooked. “Some men go but none of the women go, I am 100% sure. No one calls the women.” Aanya continues, “When I ask them to join, they don't listen to me attentively, they only think about the goods that they could get.”

Dhruv speaks more favorably of BBE: “I would say there are benefits of participating in the FPO,” he says. “We can get a lot of information regarding farming and it has helped me in getting better farming results.” As a member of the OBC (Other Backward Caste), Dyruv’s main complaint is the inequality in distribution based on wealth status. “Usually the wealthy farmers receive more assistance from the FPOs compared to the small and marginalized farmers as the wealthy farmers deal more with the FPOs.” He continues, “They buy more seeds and manure from the FPOs and sell them at higher rates, so the FPO assists (them) more.”

Even with some assistance, for farmers like Aanya and Dhruv most days are long. Aanya gets up at 3am, takes a walk, finishes morning chores and tending the cattle before she heads out to work in the fields at 5:30am. Dhruv is up at 4am, and says they end up going to bed around 10pm. While they both work long hours, neither one would ask their children to share the load. “We would never take the kids out of school for this work,” Dhruv says. “We believe that they should achieve something through their education, which is why we don’t let anything interfere with their studies.”

And so, while Dhruv works his uncle’s farm, Aanya continues to balance her home responsibilities with her government job as an ASHA worker; a job which her husband is completely supportive of. “It is good if women are working,” he says. “There is nothing inappropriate about it. The old perception should change. Nowadays, women are working in every field.”

Aanya agrees: "Women should work outside,” she says, adding a caveat, “after they do their housework.” Above all, she sees the efficiency in teamwork. “The change that should come is that when we both work together; then the work will be done faster."