PRT News
Southern PRTs Reach and Teach Beyond Iraq’s Borders
By Aaron Snipe
Special Correspondent
September 17, 2008
On August 22, PRT Muthanna’s Senior Agricultural Advisor, Dr. Indu Chandra Ram, led a delegation of senior Iraqi officials from Muthanna and Maysan provinces on a 10-day research trip to India that focused on agricultural development. The visit was sponsored by the two provinces’ Provincial Reconstruction Teams in cooperation with the Bankers Institute of Rural Development (BIRD) of India and India’s National Bank for Agricultural & Rural Development (NABARD).
Dr. Ram first conceived of the idea of bringing Iraqis to his native India almost one year ago. “I had many contacts in the agricultural sector in Lucknow,” Ram said as he spoke proudly of his hometown. “India and Iraq share some of the same agricultural challenges, and I felt we had a wonderful opportunity to design a program that would greatly benefit the Iraqis.” Ram put together a program which took sixteen officials from both provinces on a whirlwind tour around Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. “In dealings with our Iraqi counterparts, we almost always hear the need for training,” Muthanna PRT Team Leader Brad Lynch told his counterpart on the Maysan PRT, Dan Foote. Both strongly supported Ram’s efforts and Foote noted, “Iraqi potential is limitless if we can help get folks the right training in the agricultural sector.”
During their 10-day visit, the delegation made its way to various plantations, rural lending centers, and micro-finance collectives. The Iraqis met with Indian agricultural officials and local farmers in order to gain a better understanding of the relationships and challenges of rural agricultural economies. For example, Ram took the delegation to a bio-tech park where they explored new technologies at a bio-fertilizer laboratory.
Because of southern Iraq’s dry arid climate, the most valuable sessions for the participants focused on irrigation. The delegation visited the headquarters of an irrigation project funded by the World Bank, and made a field visit to a project site where a local water-use association is working to improve crop production by more efficient irrigation techniques. Focusing on the delegation’s desire to learn more about public-private partnerships, Dr. Ram also arranged a meeting with senior representatives of a number of Indian corporations.
While the visiting delegation included no women, this did not stop Ram from organizing a visit to a women’s Self-Help Group (SHG) which promotes women’s employment and micro-enterprises in rural areas. Women from this SHG described their efforts to empower women in their communities through crop cultivation, garment making, food processing, livestock rearing, and small business ownership.
One of the primary strengths of this program was in the follow-up. Unlike other visits abroad, where Iraqi participants bring only slide shows and memories back to their home country, Dr. Ram and the delegation returned to Iraq with a plan to take advantage of the their experiences. In the weeks since his return, Ram has met with officials from both Muthanna and Maysan in an effort to design new and more effective agricultural models based on those studied in India. “Planning for these models will take time,” Ram said, “but we are firmly on track and, since I am here, I can help keep the lines of communication open between Muthanna/Maysan and Lucknow.”
Perhaps the most rewarding moment of program came in the aftermath of the trip. After the long journey from Lucknow back to Iraq, Dr. Meften Saad Turki, Dean of the College of Agriculture at Samawa University told Ram, “The India visit has opened a new door for exchange of technical knowledge between research institutions of India & Iraq.” Muthanna’s Director General of Agriculture remarked, “It is eye opening for us to witness the way women self-help groups and agricultural cooperatives are working well. It’s an excellent model, one that we can repeat here.”