Agricultural scientist Angshuman Majumdar returns to his roots

Angshuman Majumdar, a native of Jalpaiguri is motivating and empowering the youth of his homeland to get drawn to the love of the soil and use it in a productive way. Most of them were earlier leaving their homes and going off to Delhi or Mumbai as construction workers. Agriculture was not a lucrative job for them. But that is not anymore. Angshuman has not just himself returned to his native village, but also ensuring that many stay back and cultivate their own lands in a financially productive manner.

Angshuman Majumdar is an agricultural scientist who passed from the prestigious Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) of Pusa, New Delhi and was working in Hyderabad.  All his batchmates opted for lucrative jobs abroad. But the love and passion for the soil held him back and brought him to the place where he originally belonged. For him returning to Jalpaiguri is like homecoming. He returned to his village, Manthani in Jalpaiguri and became the torchbearer of organic forming, helping the entire village to go green.

Angshuman himself had a small bit of land and started mushroom cultivation there. After two failed attempts, the third endeavour turned out to be successful. He had two neighbours who were about to leave for Kerala. He inspired them with his success story with mushroom and asked them to follow his footsteps by starting mushroom cultivation with all the money that they had. Angshuman did a thorough market survey of financial gains in mushroom cultivation to figure out the potential customers. In the process, he found out that Nepal has a huge demand for mushrooms. Gradually, the success story of this innovative cultivation spread like fire, people were motivated and started their journey with mushroom. Today, there are 52 farmers who are into mushroom cultivation in the area and are earning a considerable amount of money which was an impossible idea even a few years ago. 

Angshuman had used his profound knowledge about organic farming as an agriculture scientist and helped in uplifting the masses providing them an alternative means of livelihood. He has also introduced many other unique concepts of cultivation, such as breeding of fish without waterbodies like ponds. He has shown that is possible to cultivate an equal amount of fish in two tanks of 10,000 litres within six months as much as it is possible in a pond in a year. He has shown the villagers unique strategy of increasing the fertility of goats, hydrophonic technique of cultivating grass without land.

He has also helped farmers grow exotic vegetables and fruits, ornamental fish, by using Bioflock Fish Farming. He helped them with new techniques in Country Chicken Farming and Goat Farming. Vermicomposting and use of organic pesticides ensure the sustainable crop farming. In his own words: “While I was in the research centre, I have seen people using chemicals relentlessly which would make the land barren after a few years. Even if crops could be grown in the land, the amount of pesticides that remained were detrimental for human body and increases the chances of cancer and disrupts the functionality of the body. There are certain aspects of organic farming which were used in ancient farming methods. I wanted to bring them back and introduce organic farming which would eliminate any kind of health risk.”