India is a country of farmers and still the primary income of approx 70% of our total population comes from agriculture. But in most places, due to low rainfall and use of very old technology, the farmer does not get the fruits of his hard work. Most of the farmers have to bear the loss due to lack of availability of water or proper irrigation.

Similar situation happened in Jhabua, a tribal-dominated district of Madhya Pradesh. It was very hard to cultivate in the hilly terrain of tribal areas. Here the crop yield was low due to 35° downward slanting soil surface due to which all water used to flow downhill & rain water based farming was not feasible. A farmer named Ramesh Baria was disappointed by this and wished to do farming with better yields.

Due to these challenges he contacted NAIP (National Agricultural Innovation Project) KVK scientists in the year 2009-2010 and under their guidance, he started vegetable cultivation in a small step type patch of land during winter and rainy season. This vegetable cultivation was just right for this kind of land. Here he started growing bitter gourd, sponge gourd. Soon he also set up a small nursery. However, during the initial development phase, they experienced acute water shortage due to delayed monsoon.

Seeing that his crop might be ruined, Baria again sought the help of NAIP. Where experts suggested that they adopt drip irrigation technique with the help of water bottles of Waste medical Glucose bottles . He purchased plastic bottles of Rs 20 per kg from one of his known scrap dealer who was dealing in plastic medical wastes and cut off the upper half to make an inlet for the water. Next, he hung them near the plants.

He created a consistent drop by drop steady flow of water from these bottles & asked his children to refill all the bottles before going to school in the morning,

With this technique like an miracle he earned a profit of Rs 15,200 from 0.1-hectare of land till the season ending. Not only was this technology efficient enough to save his plants from drought, but it also resulted in zero wastage of water and was done in a cost-effective manner.

In addition, waste glucose plastic bottles that would otherwise have taken forever to rot in the garbage dump of medical waste was used in an brilliant manner thus by saving environment. It was soon adopted by other farmers of the village as well. Ramesh Baria was awarded the Certificate of Appreciation from the District Administration and Agriculture Minister of the Government of Madhya Pradesh.