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District officials and Unicef have collaborated on the Integrated Women's Empowerment Programme in Maharashtra's Yavatmal district. More than 800 women's self-help groups have been set up, helping villagers set up dairy and horticulture cooperatives and several other livelihood projects. With their new-found confidence, women are now taking charge of village education and other public services
Three kilometres from the bus stop, I arrived at Shirola village, Zari block, in Maharashtra's Yavatmal district where Anasuya and 30 other women greeted me with happy, confident faces. Four years ago, the women of this village got together to form a self-help group (SHG). Today, they are self-sufficient, no longer at the mercy of the local moneylender who used to lend the 300-odd villagers here funds at a whopping 10-20% interest per month. Now, the people borrow money from their own Bachat Gat. In fact, they even offer money to the moneylender! Shirola is one of hundreds of villages covered by Sadhana Dube at the Yavatmal district office. Dube and her team, who work with several local NGOs, have put to rest the standard criticism that government officials work merely to tote up figures and meet targets on paper. "I am genuinely interested in the uplift of the poor rural women and through them the entire village," explains Dube. Forging a partnership with Unicef, the Yavatmal district office decided to implement the official Integrated Women's Empowerment Programme in two of Yavatmal's 16 blocks. Unicef, which has an educational project ongoing in Yavatmal district, had expressed an interest in sensitising and empowering women who could make a difference to various aspects of village life -- education being just one. Sadhana Dube coordinates this project and has successfully built up a chain of women volunteers to reach out to women in every village in the Pandharkavada and Daravhe blocks of Yavatmal. Their efforts have paid off. About 820 SHGs, consisting of 18,000 women, have been formed in the two blocks. Their aggregate savings have crossed Rs 32,00,000. Meanwhile, Dube has turned her attention to the third block - Zari -- where she is supported by a dedicated young couple Sangeeta Chauhan and Sanjay Walke. The change in villages like Ganeshwadi, in Daravhe block, is immediately discernible. Ganeshwadi is a small hamlet inhabited by people belonging to the Pardhi scheduled tribe. The 100-odd people here once survived just by thieving. This is no longer the case, thanks to a women's self-help group that managed to save around Rs 50,000 over three-four years. It took a loan of Rs 2.5 lakh from the State Bank of India to buy buffaloes, build a shed for the animals and set up a cooperative dairy business. This village, in barren Vidarbha, now boasts a rose farming business. Indeed, dairy and horticulture have completely transformed the village. Besides improving the local economy, SHGs also address social issues. In Daravhe, SHG members counselled an alcoholic husband and offered him a loan of Rs 5,000 to set up a shoe shop provided he gave up drinking. Today, the man runs a reasonably large shop in town. Meanwhile, the women discuss issues and question traditions, such as the stigma attached to widows. They got a young widow to defy tradition and break a coconut and inaugurate the building of a temple. SHG members try to persuade the parents of girl children to allow their daughters to study further. They offer solutions if there is a problem. In Daravhe, the local SHG prevented a deserted woman taking to prostitution. In Chandrapur district, also in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region, the Nehru Yuva Kendra has wrought a similar transformation through women's SHGs. Vimal Madavi from Marakalmetha village in Korpana block is called `The Iron Lady'. Laughing, she explains how she brought around an erring schoolteacher. "I cannot read, so what do I know of attendance registers and all. I kept an eye on the school and when I saw the teacher coming in late, I drew a white chalk line on the wall. When he did not turn up, I made a white chalk circle. After a month, I asked him about his attendance and he lied. He said he had come in all days. I held him by the hand and drew him to this wall and asked him to count the lines and circles. When he said 20 lines and 10 circles, I pulled him up for lying and threatened to complain to the higher-ups. He apologised. And now he is a diligent teacher." Vimal and the other women intervene in other aspects of the school too, to see that all the children attend, study well and are looked after. She also explains how they used to get cheated while buying seeds and fertiliser on credit. The shopkeeper would charge Rs 300 for the seeds, instead of Rs 200, and then charge 10% interest. After three-four months, when the crop was harvested and sold, they would repay him Rs 420 for seeds that cost only Rs 200. When they formed the SHG, they got a loan from the rural bank at 12% per annum, ie 1% per month. This amount was distributed among the members at 3%. Now, for the same seeds worth Rs 200, members repay their own SHG only Rs 224. The villagers understand this math. Instead of the shopkeeper taking 10% every month, they would rather have their own SHG earn 3% as, with this, their corpus grows. And with money from the corpus they are able to set up collective businesses. In Maykalpur, the SHG bought utensils worth Rs 7,000 to be used during marriage feasts. The utensils are hired out to nearby villages. Some SHG members have started making pickles, agarbattis, etc. Today, banks take SHGs more seriously and offer them collective loans. The formation of these self-help groups has emboldened the village women who now stand on the dais, give speeches, explain schemes and make appeals. They have even presented the accounts to local officials. -- By Surekha Sule
(Surekha Sule is a Mumbai-based journalist and researcher) InfoChange News & Features, October 2003
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