NEW DELHI: Rajveer Kaur enjoys the attention she receives whenever she goes out to the fields to operate her drone. Once a housewife and mother, the 29-year-old is now an independent woman, known in her region as a \u201cdrone didi\u201d or \u201cdrone sister,\u201d helping fertilize farmland and protect it from pests.
Kaur was working with a self-help group in her village in Faridkot district of Punjab when she was selected to join a government program providing women with drone technology for agricultural services.
\u201cThen the central government gave us drones after giving training for a few weeks. It\u2019s now almost a year since it has happened. I get good responses from the farmers. I also got the name of a woman operating a drone in the field,\u201d she told Arab News.
\u201cI was a housewife before becoming a drone pilot. My husband supports me, and it feels really good that a woman who has been a housewife can now step out and become a productive force.\u201d
She also gets a sense of financial independence and can contribute to her household\u2019s budget, earning on average $150 a month.
\u201cThere\u2019s also a message in this \u2014 that a woman, even while being a housewife, can earn and become independent. She can show that she can be a pilot too \u2014 even if it means a drone pilot,\u201d Kaur said.
\u201cSometimes farmers bargain, but generally I earn $4 for spraying one acre of land. It takes only five minutes. In the last eight months since I started working as a drone pilot, I\u2019ve earned close to 100,000 rupees (around $1,160).\u201d
She is one of the thousands of women in rural India who joined the government\u2019s scheme to empower women-led self-help groups.
Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2023, the \u201cDrone Didi\u201d program aims to distribute 15,000 drones among the groups by the end of this year.
The 25\u201330 kg industrial drones are designed for agricultural use \u2014 to spray pesticides and fertilizers on farmland.
Kaur\u2019s job involves filling the drones\u2019 canisters with chemicals and then remotely navigating the devices over the fields to spray the crops, covering several hectares a day.
Farmers were initially reluctant, but they soon realized that the method works. Kaur\u2019s neighbor, Manjinder Singh, was one of the first farmers to participate in the program when he sowed his field in December and had five and a half acres of land sprayed by drones.
\u201cThat was the first time I got my field sprayed by a drone. It was a new experience. It took less time, and it was very smooth,\u201d he said.
\u201cIn terms of cost, I don\u2019t see much difference, but it saved a lot of time and physical effort.\u201d
What convinced farmers to rely on the services of the drone operators is that remote spraying uses much less water and is safer for the crops.
Drone operators do not walk through the fields and do not cause physical damage to the crops. They also reduce the probability of crops being infected.
\u201cBacterial illnesses do not get transferred from one field to another when you use a drone. You are not carrying the bacteria from one field to another because you\u2019re not physically walking through the fields,\u201d Roopendra Kaur, a 29-year-old drone pilot from Firozpur district, explained.
Her main job is in large fields during the sowing seasons. But in between the seasons, drone operators are active too, only their tasks are smaller \u2014 like spraying vegetable fields or chili plantations. Since getting her drone in March last year, she has earned about $1,200.
\u201cWe have got a sense of purpose in life and to be a drone didi is really a respectable profession. Farmers were initially hesitant, but they appreciate our work,\u201d Kaur said.
\u201cThis was the first time I have stepped out of the house. I have been a housewife all my life and this is my first independent work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW DELHI: Rajveer Kaur enjoys the attention she receives whenever she goes out to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[279],"class_list":["post-1532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","tag-indias-drone-sisters-navigate-change-in-farming-and-social-roles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1534,"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions\/1534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestatemonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}