Syngenta is a leading agri-input company offering the best scientific and innovative crop solutions. This goes a long way in helping millions of farmers around the world to grow safe and nutritious food, while also protecting the planet. It also aids in the improvement of sustainability, quality, and safety of agriculture.
Dr KC Ravi, Chief Sustainability Officer, Syngenta India, at the helm of affairs, speaks about Syngenta India’s flagship CSR initiative I-CLEAN: Inculcating Cleanliness, Learning, Education, Awareness and New Habits, launched in 2015, inspired by PM Narendra Modi’s call for Swachch Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission).
I-CLEAN is a formidable social intervention designed for farmers’ empowerment and rural prosperity. It works by creating enabling infrastructure for farmers to sell their produce and enhance their incomes, besides ensuring a safe & hygienic work environment for them and their families.
Syngenta India, having been at the forefront of discourse and action on rural prosperity, realized it had a big role to play in this call for transformation by the Prime Minister. I-CLEAN was an outcome of our interaction and comprehension of the unique social and economic problems of rural communities. As the name suggests, this was an ambitious program following Community Led and Community Saturation approaches – that made the community the fulcrum of the transformative program.
This project addresses the issue of inadequate infrastructure and unhygienic conditions in rural vegetable markets. By enabling good infrastructure and holistic facilities such as toilet blocks, solar lights, rainwater harvesting & storage facilities, garbage disposal systems, and drinking water facilities – the project has brought about unprecedented qualitative transformations in the lives of farmers, especially the women, ensuring a life of dignity for the rural population, and rural prosperity.
I-CLEAN is one of our most innovative sustainable solutions which has a long-term impact on the socioeconomic conditions of local communities in India. We have developed and renovated rural vegetable markets in remote villages of Bihar, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Telangana. Today we have 25 running projects in four states; 110 sheds with 360 raised platforms and have impacted about 10,00,000 lives with improved health & incomes.
According to an independent study, the project has achieved substantive gains with a 42% Increase in vendor income, a 90% improvement in cleanliness, 89% improvement in drinking water among others. Syngenta opened a new wayside market, its 25th under I-CLEAN, and biggest so far in the country in 2023.
Spread over 51020 sq feet, this wayside market in Wanaparthy, Telangana is built for Rs 3.3cr and has been handed over to the Agriculture Marketing Board of the district for operation and maintenance.
This modern market has all amenities including approach roads from the highway, 78 raised platforms, sheds, lights, parking facility, safe drinking water, toilet blocks for men and women, water harvesting, lush green frontage, waste disposal pits, sheds, and canteen.
The marketplace provides exclusive facilities for women farmers including a day care facility with a baby feeding room. This will ensure that women farmers can focus on their business without being concerned about leaving their children at home.