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Winds of change from Srinagar

Dr. Gazalla Amin is a self made woman. A vocalist for change and support, she divides her time between family, business, and woman empowerment. She was not, however, groomed to be the change-maker she became. Like most middle class girls in the Valley, she did what her elders told her to do.

She went to the all-girls Presentation Convent in Srinagar where her parents wanted her to study and, later and enrolled in the medical college at Srinagar. During the fourth year of her MBBS degree, she was married to a young businessman.

“I completed my studies after marriage. My in-laws were quite supportive,” she says. But Amin never got down to practicing medicine as she became a mother soon after.

As she dutifully ran her home and took care of her three sons, she decided to put her education to good use by teaching at the newly instituted Jhelum Medical College in the early 1990s.

Amin never once abandoned her secret desire to do something that “lay outside the confines of what I had been told was ‘good’ for me”. That opportunity came to her when she visited her native Sonawari village in Bandipora district of south Kashmir.

Amin recalls, “The land there was lying neglected and barren and I realised that I could make a difference in the local community by involving them in cultivating crops that would be commercially viable.”

In 2004, when Amin decided to grow lavender and rose in order to extract and sell their oils, her family and friends were not in favor of her making the switch from medicine to business.

After all, women were never associated with entrepreneurship in Kashmir. But Amin was determined to fight the feudal attitude of the society and invested her savings of about Rs. 8 lakh in the farm to grow and process aromatic plants.

“As I was from a professional family, my exposure to running a business was minimal. But I decided to hang in there anyway. I didn’t earn anything out of it for three years but I knew I would learn the ropes on the job,” she adds.

Another driving factor for her was that she was keen to see local farmers increase their earning potential – a lavender crop brought in about 20 times as much as, say, maize – to better support their families.

When business started picking up, she took loans from the bank and government agencies to expand her operations. With increased capital in hand, she purchased superior equipment for farming as well as processing. She also employed the local youth to assist her in this.

Over the years, Amin’s Fasiam Agro Farms has turned out to be a huge success. Besides dealing in essential oils, she has expanded her activities to dry fruits and honey.

Apart from her business venture, she founded Women’s Association for Kashmir Entrepreneurs (WAKE) in an effort to provide direction to women’s entrepreneurship in the state.

Last year, she also contested the elections of the Jammu and Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which had had no female representation since its inception in 1934. Amin broke into this privileged circle by becoming the first woman member of its executive council.

Amin has another first to her name: she is the only female recipient of the state’s Progressive Farming Award and recently received the ‘Women Entrepreneur of the Year Award’ from a prestigious media house.

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