Page 98 - Acharya Vinoba Bhave in 21st Century ISBN

21oha “krkCnh esa vkpk;Z fouksck Hkkos dh izklafxdrk

Another popular story concerns bringing an open field of one and a quarter acres under cultivation
entirely by hand. Data were diligently collected. It took 337 ½ hours to dig the field and 1140 man

hours in total for the year. It produced a net profit of 285 rupees or about 4 annas per hour—a return
more than three times the wage for local agricultural labor. From such data all sorts of extrapolations

are possible: that one person, alone and by hand, could easily farm 2½ acres and that rishi-kheti was
50% more profitable than bullock farming. 9

More investigation will be needed to go beyond such anecdotes and establish a developmental
history of rishi-kheti. But it seems strenuous body labor was the order of the day right from the beginning,

with all ashram members working as hard as they could to see how much they could do by hand. This
included Vinoba, who worked so hard that his companions became concerned for his heath and asked

him to take it easier. But rishi-kheti was not just hard work. Replacing bullocks with humans at the
Persian wheel required some redesign of the turnstile and shows how intelligence was applied to the

task. And there was always attention to keeping the data needed to evaluate alternative ways of doing
things. Rishi-kheti really was embedded in a culture of thoughtful experimentation.

Fortunately, we have a very good picture of what rishi-kheti eventually amounted to at Paunar
because Vinoba set down his thoughts about it not long after he left the ashram on his bhoodan tour. 10

Vinoba begins by saying there is great ideal behind rishi-kheti which he has clarified in his own mind in
eight points. To paraphrase:

Rishi-kheti:
1. is for everyone because everyone benefits through the connection to nature;

2. provides both exercise and natural therapy and can be available in every village;
3. can be a laboratory for study and experimentation—can compare manual farming with bullock

and machine farming;
4. allows everybody be involved and so agriculture benefits from everyone’s intelligence;

5. goes well with Nai Talim—children can produce enough for their own needs.
6. is one remedy for unemployment;

7. helps the mind be serene;
8. reduces the burden on animals and enhances self-reliance—can be the next step towards non-

violence.
Notice how some benefits that were attached simply to growing your own vegetables—better

quality food, helping the nation grow more food, swadeshi—are not part of this list, perhaps because
they could be got through any kind of local farming. Here the emphasis is on what flows from manual

farming. First are the personal benefits: a connection with nature, exercise, learning, and mental serenity.
I doubt there is a hobby gardener in the world that would disagree with this list. Next are the social

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