“Bina aadmi ton uddan vaali vastu (an object that flies unmanned),” is all that Kiranpal Kaur (34) knew about drones until just a few months ago.
Now a trained drone pilot, Kiranpal, from Sekha village in Punjab’s Barnala district, describes the feeling when she successfully flew a drone for the first time as like having “a little part of the world, which I owned and controlled, in my hands”.
“I have never travelled in a plane, but it felt like I was flying one. It gave me confidence that I could achieve anything. It was all in my hands,” said Kiranpal, who studied until class 10.
Soon, she will be taking her drone and travelling across her district in an e-vehicle to spray fertilisers and pesticides in agricultural fields under the NAMO Drone Didi Scheme launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November last year.
The scheme was launched after Modi, during his Independence Day speech, had announced a plan to train at least 15,000 ‘Drone Didis’ across the country, ushering a tech revolution in agriculture by spraying fields using drones. The scheme aims to reduce labour costs, as well as save time and water, apart from empowering women in rural areas.
Modi had announced that the goal was to create at least two crore Lakhpati Didis (rural women earning in lakhs) in the country through self-help groups (SHGs).
Kiranpal is among the first batch of 300 women to have been trained by the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), the largest manufacturer of chemical fertilisers in the country. The cooperative will also be providing drones and e-vehicles to the trained women pilots free of cost.
For Kiranpal, the journey was not easy. Her husband is a construction worker who earns around Rs 500-700 a day, and she herself had been earning around Rs 3,000 a month from selling homemade pickles through a self-help group.
Nearly a month ago, she left her quaint village for the training centre in Gurgaon’s Manesar, along with her three-month-old child.
“When we reached the training centre, I realised everything was in English, including theory classes and the notes they had provided. I am only a 10th pass, and it was almost 18 years since then that I was touching books again,” she said.
She also said that back in her village, questions were raised about whether she would have to compromise on her motherly duties. However, she said that once she got back from training, having become a drone pilot, there was a massive sense of pride.
“Before practically handling a drone, we first had to clear theory. Our trainers were extremely cooperative, and they helped us in translating the notes in Hindi and Punjabi. Once I cleared the theory exam, there was no looking back. Now, when we have returned after successful training and a certificate in hand, everyone is feeling proud that the word ‘pilot’ has been attached to my name,” she said.
“Now, the word ‘pilot’ seems like a trophy I have earned in life,” she added.
Women from various different backgrounds and educational qualifications, from those who stopped at class 10 to those who have postgraduate degrees, applied to be trained as drone pilots. They were contacted by a network of organisations working in the agricultural sector at village-level, including GT Bharat, Farmer Producers Organisation (FPO) and others, who further connected them to IFFCO.
Their selection process included interviews, in which they were tested for basic knowledge regarding farming.
Among the first to be selected from Punjab was Jaswinder Kaur Dhaliwal (46) from Rattian village of Moga district, who has studied up to class 12 and is involved with at least 15 women’s self-help groups in her village.
“Before training, I had only seen drones clicking pictures and recording videos during Punjabi weddings,” Jaswinder said.
She said that after clearing theory, the trainers showed them how to pilot a drone on computers, before eventually giving them control of an actual drone.
“A drone takes just around seven minutes to spray one acre. There are three zones – red, yellow, and green – to look out for when flying drones, and we cannot fly in the red zones. There is a tank fitted on the drone, which we fill with 10 litres of water and one litre of fertiliser or pesticide,” she explained.
Preeti Sharma, a 20-year-old from Moga’s Sosan village who has done a diploma course on computers, used to work as a receptionist earning Rs 6,000 a month, before her father, a peon at a cooperative bank, motivated her to get trained as a drone pilot
“I had seen on the Internet that drones were used in fields in foreign countries. I was scared that it will crash when I handled it for first time, but later we realised it wasn’t that tough. Now, all the farmers in my village are waiting for me to get the drone and start spraying their fields” she said.
Mandeep Kaur Pannu (40), who grows cucumbers on her five-acre field with her husband in Ludhiana’s Barundi village, said she knew drones were making in-roads into agriculture.
“We already work with FPO to help small farmers and provide them seeds, pesticides, urea, etc. So, we thought if we get a drone, it will benefit a lot of farmers in our area. I felt my college days were back when we studied for the theory exam till late at night,” she said.
The scheme also caught the interest of women such as Zeenat Sharma (37), from Nagraon in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi. Her family owns apple orchards and her husband has a chemical fertiliser/pesticide business. A postgraduate in microbiology and a former teacher, Sharma did not face any issues during drone training.
“We spray fertilisers such as DAP and urea in apple orchards, too, and since orchards are on hilly slopes, there are a lot of issues in hiring manual labour. I have know-how of apple farming since childhood, so I wanted to learn something new related to it,” she said.
“What amazed and inspired me was the determination of rural women from Punjab for whom trainers first translated entire lectures into Hindi and then they would further translate them to Punjabi,” she said.
According to the estimates prepared by IFFCO, the scheme is expected to generate an income of at least Rs 7 lakh per annum for the Drone Didis, even if they work for just 200 days in a year and manage to spray 20 acres a day. They would be charging farmers Rs 300 per acre or more.
“Drone Didis will earn Rs 12 lakh a year if they spray 20 acres for 200 days at the cost of Rs 300 per acre. They will easily earn (a profit of) Rs 7 lakh if we exclude the cost of drone maintenance and if they hire an assistant to drive the vehicle (on which they travel to farms),” said Yogendra Kumar, marketing head, IFFCO.
He said the trained women drone pilots would be provided with a medium class drone that has a 25,000 MAH battery – enough for a flight of 20-25 minutes – as well as four extra batteries and a three-wheeler e-vehicle that will also include a genset and space to carry fertilisers and pesticides.
“The entire setup, being given for free, would otherwise cost Rs 13-14 lakh for each woman,” he said, adding that the plan is to buy 2,500 drones for the country in a phased manner. The women are expected to get the drones by January 26 or earlier.
The first batch of women trained by IFFCO in association with Gurgaon-based Drone Destination, a training company, include 22 from Punjab, 20 from Haryana, 24 from Rajasthan, 29 from Maharashtra, four from Himachal Pradesh, 18 from Gujarat, 23 from Madhya Pradesh, 28 from Uttar Pradesh, two from Kerala, 10 from Bihar, three from Uttarakhand, 20 from Karnataka, nine from Assam, 11 from Telangana, 16 from Tamil Nadu, and 13 from Andhra Pradesh, among others.
The Centre’s Department of Fertilisers said in a statement that while the traditional manual method used to spray fields uses 100-200 litres of water per acre, the same could be done with just 10 litres of water using a drone.