Global Parli Profile

An activist wedded to the idea of a better India, a statesman and deeply committed persona
Mayank Gandhi is a rare combination of a man who thinks on his feet while feeling with
his heart. No stranger to the needs of the country, he has been associated with working
towards the upliftment of the under privileged and the growth of the country in projects
that benefit a humanitarian.

He got involved in activism in 2003 and was part of the drafting of the Maharashtra RTI
along with Anna Hazare and was instrumental in other major structural reforms in the
country.

Mayank was earlier an international urban planner and used to engage with governments
on inner city development in various developed and developing countries. He was part of
the team that worked on preparing a law and process to remake Mumbai using cluster
development model. The Chicago-based CTBUH, the largest not-for-profit body of
planners and architects in the world appointed him as part of their advisory council.

In 2011, he joined the team that launched the India against Corruption (IAC) movement
and was a Core Committee in this seminal movement. When the movement morphed into
a political party (Aam Aadmi Party – AAP), he was part of the highest body viz. the
National Executive.

In 2015, realizing his inability to continue with politics without compromising his idealism,
he quit politics completely.

Mayank was an urban man, with little exposure and knowledge of rural India and the words
of Gandhiji, “The soul of India lives in its villages” were echoing in his mind. Unless
villages are transformed, how can India be transformed.
Global Parli

In the summer of 2016 there were reports of farmer suicides in the Marathwada region of
Maharashtra that had become a common occurrence and reported widely. This region had
received less than 400 mm of rain for two consecutive years and by 2016 it was difficult
to even supply drinking water to the villagers and their families. This desperate situation
called for nothing less than a revolution and it was at that time that the first seeds of Global
Parli were planted. The Beed district of Marathwada was the worst affected with farmer
suicides showing a constant and alarming rise. The notable fact was that the Parli taluka
(106 villages) had an irrigated area of 1.72% as compared to a 40% average for all of India.
Global Parli began with an emergency relief supply of water tankers to 38 villages every
single day for a period of two months.

No. of Tankers Supplied Per Day 40

Total Water Supply in Two Months 15.4 Million Litres

Although water supply was adequate to bring temporary relief to the local community, it
was not a viable long-term solution. A concrete and sustainable measure had to be
implemented to improve the lives of the people. Moreover, a multi-pronged approach was
required to not only address the water woes but also the socio-economic issues plaguing the
region.

A deliberately and intelligently crafted rural development model had to be created, which
could understand - the various nuances and layers of rural India, identify the gaps and
shortcomings, and implement small interventions that would overcome the gaps. As a
result, 15 contiguous villages were selected as a cluster to implement the project that
would address the needs of the local populace.

The Global Parli project strategy comprises of four phases or steps that can be replicated
and scaled up across the country:
360° Development - Winning hearts and restyling mindsets by creating a movement for
change through 360° development.
Water Management - Water harvesting and its management to ensure water security.
Reducing dependency on rain-fed agriculture.
Mass Plantation - Mass plantation by motivating farmers to change cropping patterns to
horticulture using training, knowledge, and technology.
Replication - Use latest technology, innovative marketing, and value- addition processes
to magnify the increased incomes.

360° Development
At the start of the transformation process of Parli, it was important to work on capacity
building in the villages to win over the confidence of the people and make them self-
sufficient. After having suffered through adverse conditions for years, it was pertinent that
the local community was confident and proactive in bringing about a positive change in
their own lives. Therefore, in this phase, the focus was on:
1. Education
2. Health Care
3. Livelihood
4. Services
5. Social Reforms
6. Clean Energy

Area of Work Activities Impact

Education Improving school Many students have been

infrastructure viz. building impacted through activities
boundary walls, toilet focused on improving quality
construction, water supply and access to schools.
through solar water pumps,
water filters for clean
 drinking water, smokeless
chulhas for mid-day meal
preparation

Increasing quality, through e-

learning kits, school libraries,
personal mentoring, and
sports

Healthcare Organising health camps and Many people impacted

diagnostic care through health camps and
associated activities

Livelihood Empowering Self Help

Groups through goat rearing,
stitching, food products, and
poultry

Services Distribution of Ration Cards More than 1,500 Ration

Cards distributed for the first
time in the cluster of 15
villages

Social Reforms Tackling Alcoholism and ban Made 15 villages hooch-free

of illicit liquor and provided alternative
means of
livelihoods to alcohol shop
owners.

Clean Energy Distribution Solar lamps, A total of 1000 clean energy

Solar street lights, solar water installations in 15 villages of
pumps, smokeless chulhas Parli

Water Management
Water is the lifeline of rural India and the fountainhead of our movement.
We started in 2017 with - the deepening and widening of 10.2 km of the Paapnashi river
and creating 54 rainwater harvesting borewells. This work was done through contributions
of the villagers and government schemes. It became our modus operandi.

In 2018, our activities on water harvesting converted into a people’s movement. People
from the nearby villages came out with their tools and worked for eight hours a day for 45
days without any payments. The infectious energy dissolved differences of caste, income
and politics. Young and new leadership emerged and the energy in the villages was
perceptive.
Water tables were raised and water dependence on rains reduced.

Year Activity Impact

37.5 km of deepening and 892 million created

widening of the Paapnashi
River and its tributaries

Installation of borewell 54 Borewells installed along

2017 recharge shafts to increase the course of the Paapnashi
aquifer levels River

Construction and repair of Total surface water storage

watershed structures: capacity created: 1.32 billion
litres

161 Farm Ponds Farm ponds: 686 Million

Litres

5 KT Weir Dams KT Weir Dams: 450 Million

Litres
2018

26 CNB Dams CNB Dams: 78 Million

Litres

60 km of Bunds Bunds: 61 Million Litres

 20.3 km of WAT WAT: 31.9 Million Litres

414 Soak Pits Soak Pits: 7.6 Million Litres

2.4 km of Deep CCT Deep CCT: 5.7 Million Litres

Mass Plantation
Traditional crops like cotton and soya give a stagnant annual income per acre. Combined
with lack of marketing acumen, this has led to farm distress, poverty and suicides.

Switching to horticulture can increase farmer incomes by multiple times as output of

horticultural crops is at least three times that of staple crops. Horticulture combined with
switching to modern agricultural techniques that don’t depend on rainfed agriculture, a
farmer can very easily increase the productivity of even small portions of land.

In 2019, one million fruit trees were planted in Parli to create a scale. This will allow for
scale in innovative marketing, direct-to-customer sale, exports, buyback arrangements and
tie-ups with agro giants, while adding value to the produce and increasing incomes of the
farmers.
Replication and Scaling Up
The first success of the prototype in Parli Taluka, consisting of 106 villages, in 2020 has
made us take up an ambitious plan to replicate and scale-up the project in other parts of the
country to re-emphasize the learning from Parli as well as fine-tune and enhance a strategy
for multiplying farmer incomes in varied circumstances, geographies and
governance environments.

Marathwada, the place with highest suicides

The success of our model Parli has brought a lot of interest to the region and created a buzz
about this model in the neighboring talukas and districts. Capitalizing on the same, we have
planned to increase our area of operations in the region - from 1 Taluka of 106 villages to
3885 villages encompassing 38 Talukas of the 4 worst drought-affected districts of
Marathwada - Beed, Latur, Parbhani and Osmanabad. The regional area is 31,902 sq km,
which is larger than 58 countries in the world and 14 states/UTs in India. The population of
these 4 districts is more than 85 lakh.

Raisen, the heart of MP

While Parli is a completely bottom-up process, the replication and scaling up of this Process
will entail a top down and policy-enabled prototype. In Raisen, a district consisting of 1485
villages that is close to Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, we have begun the creation of another
prototype. This model will be created using concurrent support of Government
policymakers and machinery to grow over 10 lakh fruit trees in the next 2 years. The
proximity of Raisen to Bhopal will provide an opportunity to easily experiment with a direct
farmer-to-consumer marketing strategy and reduce the role of middlemen in the supply
chain, creating a win-win situation for both farmers and consumers.

Marketing and Value Addition for Increasing Incomes

Our work doesn’t end with just planting trees and setting up market linkages. Modern
agriculture requires the development of end-to-end supply chains that can increase yields
and productivity of agricultural produce. For this, a wide variety of marketing strategies
need to be structured to add value to agricultural produce. Our future strategies include:

● Connecting farmers with wholesalers, APMC markets, exporters, big retailers.

● Farmer-to-Consumer Models
● Pack-houses, processing houses, post-harvest treatment for value addition to
produce. For example, fruit/vegetable juices, pickles etc.
● Market Intelligence to track demand and supply of agricultural produce across time
and locations through algorithmic softwares.

Cutting-Edge Agriculture Technology

In addition to focusing on drip irrigation and usage of bio-fertilizers that improve the
survival rates of plants, we are building a portal that uses satellite data as well as ground
data to monitor each and every farm and give monitoring reports every 5 days. Furthermore,
it will also trigger alarms whenever a tree/plant is in distress so that attention can be given
to it.

Crop Monitoring- provide real time crop vegetation monitoring via IOT sensors and satellite
imagery

Farm advisory- To provide crop-based advisory for better yield by mapping vegetations.

Our Future Plans

From 2019, we have planted 3 million fruit trees for increasing the farmer incomes multiple
times in Marathwada, Maharashtra & Raisen, Madhya Pradesh. This will increase rainfall,
enrich soil, improve the environment and most importantly, increase farmer income
multiple times.

In the upcoming years, Global Parli intends to facilitate setting up of forward linkage units,
procurement centers, sort-pack-clean units, farm-to-consumer marketing, godowns and
cold storage, processing units like drying, pulping etc, post-harvest management.

Additionally, at Global Parli we are currently also working towards replicating the model
across India. We have initiated talks for planting fruit trees in Palghar and Ratnagiri
(Maharashtra), Rae Bareli (Uttar Pradesh), Ariyalur (Tamil Nadu), Bhavnagar (Gujarat),
Haryana, Punjab and a many other places across India. These would be over-and-above the
above 3 million plantations.

We are also undertaking certain ancillary activities viz. - capacity building of planting
materials (better quality of saplings and R&D), bringing in best practices and technology
to increase production (India’s production is 11.6 T/ha while US is 23.3 T/ha), third-party
audit of our trust, tie-up for training and technology transfer with the Netherlands and Israel,
creation training materials and programs, infusing more IT (cloud computing, app, satellite
mapping, block-chain) in our activities, creating a robust team etc are also being
undertaken.
That we also intend to work closely with governments and international organizations to
participate and influence creation of policies and task forces. In that regard, we met the
Union Agriculture Minister, Union Agriculture Secretary, ICAR Deputy Director, some of
the top bureaucrats in Madhya Pradesh, some Union Ministers, and worked on a possible
meeting with the Chief Ministers of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.