Every person has to face challenges to achieve his goal in life. Instead of letting go of challenges, we should focus on finding better ways to reach our goals, but most of us often do the opposite. Most people blame their inability to meet the set goals instead of looking for alternative ways. The story of Prakhar Pratap of Prayagraj is an exemplary example of facing challenges and achieving goals deftly.
Born in a farmer’s family in the Kaushambi district of Uttar Pradesh, Prakhar completed his education up to class 12 from a village school. Despite being a farmer himself, Prakhar’s father always kept him away from farming activities and inspired the son to become a civil engineer. Prakhar had a keen interest in farming but fulfilled his father’s wish and completed his civil engineering studies from the Prayagraj district of Uttar Pradesh.
After studies, Prakhar worked for companies like FLCL, Kolkata Metro, Era Infrastructure, Supertech, etc. Extensive travels while working for these companies helped Prakhar gain meaningful insight into the lives of people in rural and urban India. His travels, especially in the districts of Orissa and West Bengal, introduced him to the world of fish farming. Prakhar’s first interest in agricultural activities arose after learning the basics of fish farming, he soon planned to introduce fish farming as an additional activity along with traditional farming in his village.
Prakhar knew that setting up a successful fish farming business would not be easy. The troubles had to start from their home. It was not easy to persuade his family members to take up fishing. He somehow got permission from his family for this business and started working on the project. He also approached the local fisheries department for help but soon realized that the department lacked expertise. The first year for him was full of setbacks and learnings due to a lack of techniques.
Not giving up on the initial pitfalls, he accepted it as a lesson and decided to sharpen his knowledge. He soon came in contact with Meja, a fisheries specialist from Uttar Pradesh, and invited her to visit his village. Appreciating Prakhar’s spirit, the experts agreed to visit his village and stay there for a few days. During Prakhar’s four days of stay in the village, the expert found out the basic problems faced in fertilization techniques and explained to them about better fertilization techniques. This proved to be very effective for Prakhar.
With this advanced technology, he started seeing results immediately and he started making profits very soon. In the second season of its second year of operation, Prakhar made a handsome profit of Rs.10 lakh. For him, the benefit of ten lakh rupees was not only in terms of money, but also acted as a testament to his decision to quit his job for fish farming. His last salary while working was 40 thousand rupees per month.
Prakhar has not only established his fish farming business but is also helping other farmers of the area to take up fish farming along with their ongoing agricultural activities. Thanks to this social initiative of Prakhar, new fish farming techniques are helping farmers earn more from their farms than ever before.
The efforts of youths like Prakhar towards making the farmers financially empowered at the grassroots level are highly commendable.
