Maharashtra Will Implement Modern Farm Equipment In Prison Farming

The home department approved funds on January 25 for the purchase of various machinery and equipment for the Yerawada central prison, the Buldhana district prison, and the open prisons in Yerawada, Pathan, Nashik Road, Nagpur, Morshi, Visapur, Kolhapur, and Ratnagiri. Power tillers, cultivators, ploughing and sowing machinery, rotavators, mechanized yielding equipment, submersible pumps, and seed and fertilizer drills are among the equipment.

The Maharashtra prison department has launched an initiative to introduce modern farm equipment into prison farming, which is an important component of the correctional ecosystem. According to officials, the modernization will not only help inmates train on the implements but will also increase the agricultural productivity of the prisons.

There are 60 prisons in the state, including nine high-security central prisons, 19 open prisons, 31 district prisons, and one open jail colony. As many as 31 prisons have year-round agriculture programmes for inmates, producing vegetables, grains, and fruits. They also engage in animal husbandry, as well as dairy and poultry farming. They have 596 hectares of agricultural land in total, including 188 hectares of irrigated land and 144 hectares of rainfed farmland. The annual agriculture production from prisons is worth Rs 5 crore.

"We plan to introduce a lot of modernization and innovations into prison agriculture in the coming months," said Amitabh Gupta, additional director-general of police. Agriculture is an important activity in the prison correctional ecosystem, and the goal is to train inmates for modern farming."

Every day, approximately 900 inmates—50 of whom are women—are employed in prison agriculture activities. "The introduction of cutting-edge farming equipment will help train inmates in modern mechanization-intensive agriculture," said Rajaram Kharat, technical officer (prison agriculture). The skill sets they gain here will give them a better chance of finding work and earning a living through agriculture after they are released. This will also increase the productivity of prison agriculture, which is usually done organically."

According to officials, inmates employed in agriculture, like all other prisons' industrial and manufacturing units, receive daily wages, which contributes to their record for remission in their sentencing.

According to officials, the inmates consume a large portion of the produce. When there is an overabundance of fruit and vegetables, the agriculture produces marketing committees sell them in local markets.

During the kharif, rabbi, and summer seasons, the inmates grow food grains, pulses, oilseeds, fruit, and leafy vegetables. Some prisons have begun growing sugarcane and selling it to sugar mills or jaggery factories.

Prisons' grassland and agroforestry land is used to cultivate fodder for dairy and goat-rearing units.

Prisons also have 80,000 teakwood, babhul, seesam, and nilgiri trees, as well as over 5,000 mangoes, tamarind, coconut, guava, and gooseberry trees on their grounds. In the recent past, some prisons have engaged in sandalwood plantations and banana farming.

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