hinglajwadi osmanabad its just past noon and all the men in this tiny village of about 3000 are busy with household chores vishnu kumbhar is cleaning the poultry yard while achyut katkate is sieving soybean other men in the neighbourhood are looking after the children the women are conspicuous by their absence clearly this is not a typical village scenekatkate clears the mystery the women have gone to osmanabad town to pay their instalments to the banks and selfhelp groups they will also visit the market to buy supplies for their businesses and shops he reveals talking of his wife komaltai he says with pride she is the leader and i am her followerkomaltai and many other unassuming women in the village are responsible for a financial revolution they have developed a sustainable model to tackle the perennial agricultural crisis in the region so successful is their model that despite repeated drought and crop failure no farmer from this village has committed suicidetheir success has driven the village moneylender out of business in fact he is looking for financial assistance from the women farmerentrepreneurs who now control the finances of their own families and of the villagewhat drives these women is the need to take care of their own rekha shinde a farmer says rain deficit and drought are permanent here a few years ago the rising number of farmer suicides in the region had got us worried so we came together to save our families and children first we decided to take care of the basic needsrekha says the first step was to make sure that in case a farmer committed suicide his family and children would not starve we asked our men to give us a small piece of land but they said women must work at home and not in the fields she recalls however the women kept asking the men for land till they relented the women then started growing vegetables together with limited water resources and help they grew enough for their families and also managed to make some profit by selling the surplus vegetablesthis experiment gave confidence to us and our family members rekha saysnext the women went to osmanabad to seek information about government schemes the government babus were unwilling to give us any information and assist us we then started visiting them in groups we were determined to bring all aid and schemes to the village says manjushree kshirsagar another farmer today the village has over 200 selfhelp groups with 265 women as members the turnover of all the womens groups put together in our village is over rs1 crore says komaltaiwith the assistance of selfhelp groups the village women have started poultry farms goat rearing dairy business cloth shops sewing business and beauty parlours says kamal kumbhar she won the cii foundation women exemplar award 2017 in the field of microenterprise as well as the niti ayogs award but kamal is not the only entrepreneurcumfarmer in the villagethere is an unwritten