Reliance Foundation led by Nita Ambani is set to bridge the divide between the urban and rural India with its CSR initiatives. The flagship project, named as Bharat India Jodo (BIJ) by RF, is focused on rural transformation and farmer’s empowerment in the underdeveloped areas across 10 states. BIJ is the brain-child of Mukesh and Nita Ambani. Since its inception in October-2010, BIJ is working in 24 under developed clusters spread across different states in the country. There are a total of 300 villages in these poorest clusters located in states like Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.
This CSR campaign of RIL works in engaging around 20,000 farming households and making them agro sustainable. Over 15,000 hectares of unfertile land has already been transformed into productive areas.
Nita Ambani recently visited Selarpur village in Mangrol town of Surat district in Gujarat state. This village has a tribal population of 1,357. She stated that as a part of BIJ initiative, a self sustainable project was undertaken in this area almost a year back. In our country, rainfall plays a major part in its agricultural industry and 70 % of the people stay in rural areas, there is an evident imbalance in the development ratios of both these segments. The agricultural development of Selarpur was achieved by Reliance Nutrition Gardens, where more than 60 kinds of vegetables are now grown. It is one of the 14 villages which form the Netrang cluster where the project is implemented.
She was astonished with the development in women and in the rise of nutrition level in the staple diet of this area. According to her, increasing the growth of rural India will dilute the development instability between urban and rural India.
BIJ initiative also focuses on water harvesting, mixed farming and marketing etc. in the affected areas. The future plans of BIJ include replicating this Selarpur story of development in all the villages where Reliance Foundation is working to make the land and the marginalized farmers more efficient.