Category Archives: Self Help Groups

Quotas for women in Panchayats

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In 1992 the Indian parliament passed the 73rd Amendment to the constitution for rural local bodies (panchayats.) This gave 33% reservation of seats for women in all three tiers of the Panchayati Raj. Questions remain however as to whether or not this affirmative action is sufficient to ensure the participation of women in the public sphere.

Nirmila (in purple) with her Self Help Group

“In the Self-Help Group we have power and freedom, but in the Panchayat I still feel limited by the fact that I am a woman and that I am illiterate. However because, as a group, we represent 25 votes, I think that the Block Development Officer is finally going to have to listen to us.” Nirmila, Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh (at the back in purple)

When I was in India I was particularly inspired to meet Ramesh Wari (featured in my post “The power of the Self-Help Group.” ) Having been a member of a Self-Help Group she had been elected to the local panchayat where she was successfully lobbying for the rights of her fellow Self-Help Group members. However, while I was there I also met Nirmila, who told me that, whilst she had been elected to the panchayat, she was really struggling to make sure that her voice was heard in meetings “because I am a woman and I am illiterate.”

Nirmila’s story is not an isolated one. Since 1992 questions have arisen as to whether or not simply reserving seats for women is sufficient to overcome the rigid social and cultural barriers that women face and which disallows their participation in the public sphere. Even after coming to positions of power, dalit women often find that they are left sitting on the floor during the course of the panchayat meetings while the male upper caste members sit on the chairs. And, as illiterate first timers, they often depend on the men folk for conducting panchayat activities. As a result they become little more than puppets in the hands of male relatives.

However I think that, as Ramesh Wari’s story shows, there is hope for women like Nirmila. Ramesh Wari has been a part of the Self-Help Group in her village for two years. Meanwhile Nirmila’s Self-Help group was only formed eight months ago. Ramesh Wari’s confidence to speak out in the panchayat, fighting for the rights of the women she represents, is the result of time spent as a Self-Help Group member, discussing issues in the group and successfully lobbying government officials to fulfil their rights.

The fact that Nirmila is part of a Self Help Group therefore stands her in good stead (indeed she might not even have stood for election had she not been a member of an SHG) And now that she is a member of the panchayat she is gaining a deeper understanding of the political system. She feeds this information back to her Self-Help Group, thereby increasing their ability to challenge the social and cultural barriers to their empowerment. This developing sense of political agency is reflected in Nirmila’s assertion that “as a group, we represent 25 votes so I think that the Block Development Officer is finally going to have to listen to us.”

This increase in political agency among women is to the benefit of all. Their focus on needs based issues, like access to clean water, education and health care, means that the whole village benefits. In Amartya Sen’s words “It is not merely that more justice must be received by women, but also that social justice can be achieved only through the active agency of women. The suppression of women from participation in social, political, and economic life hurts the people as a whole, not just women. The emancipation of women is an integral part of social progress, not just a women’s issue.”

Microcredit: The power and the pitfalls.

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Credit and debt

“I attended a training on how to run the group and how to save by making timely contributions and returning loans correctly. As a result we initiated a savings scheme and started keeping records. We have now saved 2255 Rs.” Bedi is the president of a Self Help group in Bara Kalajhore village, Jharkhand, India.

Bamari and Bedi, SHG President and Treasurer

Every couple of months a member of the Find Your Feet UK office team gives a staff seminar. These are normally based on a book that deals with an issue of relevance to our work.

Recently Betty Williams, one of the Programme Officers at Find Your Feet gave a talk about the book “What’s wrong with microfinance?” The book’s editors, Thomas Dichter and Malcolm Harper, warn against pushing credit as a right and ignoring its darker side – debt. By forging social relations based on shared debt, they argue, previous ones based on traditional reciprocity may be undermined.

Not only this but, as Blogger Tanglad writes in a powerful article A Political Economy of Shame, “given the surprising lack of entrepreneurial or job skills training in microcredit schemes, it’s not unusual for a member to default on her loan. This is when things get even uglier, as the other women in the cohort are forced to extract payment.”

On returning from India a couple of months ago I wrote a blog piece highlighting the power of the Self-Help Group. As the blog piece shows, one of the key aims of these groups is to provide women with access to affordable credit.

So are these groups prey to exactly the problems highlighted above?

In our hands

I actually think that the Self-Help Groups we support differ in their very foundation from some of the groups formed by microfinance institutions (MFIs).

Groups are popular with microfinance institutions because, as Dichter and Harper explain, they provide economies of scale. Groups appraise members’ loan proposals, guarantee loans and provide overdue loan recovery service. They also aggregate members’ savings and repayments and either disburse to new borrowers or deposit in group accounts and keep all the records – the MFI only keeps the group record.

The groups we support are, however, formed with the goal not just of increasing access to credit in an efficient way but of empowering communities to manage their own development process. This is reflected in the fact that the group itself owns the pool of money, rather than it being owned and managed by an institution outside the community. Groups therefore define their own rules, structure and responsibilities, set their own interest rates and make their own credit decisions.

Not a silver bullet but a way forward

It is also reflected in the fact that we don’t treat microcredit as a silver bullet to ending rural poverty.

Poverty elimination needs, as Dichter and Harper put it, “action on many fronts, including social safety nets, effective education, low cost health care and sound macro-economic policies.”

Our partners don’t only train Self Help Group members in financial management skills. They also provide training in vocational skills and raise awareness about the services people are entitled to. The women we work with are therefore not only developing viable small businesses, they are also helping their communities to gain access to essential services such as clean water, healthcare and education.

This has an incredibly powerful effect on the self esteem of Self Help Group members. As I wrote in the “Power of the Self Help Group,” the fact that many women are now contributing to the family income means that they have more of a say in family decisions. And, as I heard in every village I visited in India on my recent trip, the experience of working together in a group with other women for the first time is creating a new sense of trust and cohesiveness.

The power of the Self-Help Group

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Tribal dance, Jharkhand

Tribal women dancing

I recently returned from visiting our work in India for the first time. It was a truly wonderful and inspiring experience, giving me an even firmer belief in the quality of the work we do and the difference it is making to the lives of people living in rural poverty in India.

What particularly struck me on my trip was the power of the Self-Help Group (SHG) to bring about lasting change to people’s lives. SHGs, which reinforce the strong ties of kinship, neighbourliness and community, provide the building blocks for the representative federations that emerge out of FYF’s work. These federations, composed of SHG representatives, ensure the sustainability of our work long after the project has ended.

Breaking the poverty cycle

“We needed money to treat my child who fell sick so we have had to go to the money lender. When we couldn’t pay the money lender back my family lost some of our land to him. Swequani Tudo, PAHAL project, Jharkhand

Because we are not making enough money through our fields due to our land and water problems we need to get money by doing other activities. I get income from making leaf plates, from wood cutting and from working on other people’s land. I also took out a loan from our Self Help Group of 1400 Rs to buy two pigs. When these pigs are big I will be able to sell the meat for 100 Rs / Kg.

Me and the other women in the group feel much stronger now. We are making our own decisions where, in the past, we depended on male members of the family.”

Swequani Tudo

Swequani Tudo with her pigs

The first project we visited was in Jharkhand, where our five year PAHAL project working with 6,000 women began at the beginning of April. The project builds on an immensely successful two year pilot project working with 1,800 tribal women.

We were taken by each of our partner organisations (each of which are headed by tribal women) to visit four of the villages where the pilot project has been running. We were greeted in each village with flowers and dancing and then lots of excited women shared stories about all that they had already achieved through the Self Help Groups.

What really stood out for me was the difficulty of the situations these women had faced, and how, in such a short time, so much had already changed. This was especially exciting given the fact that, with the Big Lottery Fund grant, we will see even more substantial change in their lives.

Working together

Our excitement about the next five years for the women we met in Jharkhand was confirmed on visiting another two project partners, Pepus and Sabla in Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest states in India.

A group of women we met at the Pepus project, which is reaching the end of a five year project supported by the European Commission and the Innocent Foundation, showed all that could be achieve by working creatively together.

“We used to migrate to work in brick kilns. Even so we struggled to have enough money to eat and to clothe and educate our children. Chamela Debi, Pepus project, Uttar Pradesh

Now we grow watermelons together and we don’t have these problems. We had training on business planning and decided to use melon growing to earn an income. Together with 15 others I leased 12 acres of land to grow watermelons. Now we earn double what we put in. We use the profit to repair houses, educate children and to save in the banks”

Empowering women

Chamela Debi

Chamela Debi and her fellow watermelon growers

Chamela also told me that her relationship with her husband had greatly improved now that she was bringing in an income to the family. This shift in gender relations was most clearly reflected in what she told me about her two daughters: “My elder daughter married early but now we are more aware and have more money. Our younger daughter wants to go on to higher education and both my husband and I are happy for her to do so.”

The Sabla project, which is working with 1,500 women through Self Help Groups, is a fine example of how women are being empowered through their participation in Self-Help Groups. Meenu Tyagi, the director of Sabla, is an immensely inspiring and dedicated woman who has done so much to empower 1,500 women in Rae Bareli, one of India’s poorest districts. As a result a number of women spoke out confidently about the issues they face to Sonia Gandhi at a rally last year.

Many of these women have also been elected to the Gram Panchayat, the local level government in India. As elected members of the Gram Panchayat they are in an excellent position to ensure that the rights of women in their communities are fulfilled.

“One of our group, Rameshwri, has also been elected as a member of a Panchayat. She has already managed to achieve a lot for us. Because of her hard work a road has now been built to our village, four women have gained access to land that wasn’t being used, four women have built houses through the Indira Wass scheme and she helped a woman who was struggling due her husband’s illness to get a job cooking in the midday meal scheme.” Click here to read more about Rameshwri and all she is achieving.

Rameshwri

Rameshwri with her fellow SHG members

Long lasting change

At Pepus and Sabla we also met the members of the Federations, the representative institutions that emerge out of the SHGs. The Federation members are currently being trained to take over the running of the projects after FYF funding ends. It was great to see how strong and capable they already are of managing the revolving fund that supplements the SHG savings fund and to hear about their innovative business plans for the future.

A fortified fundraiser!

It was great to come back from my trip and go pretty much straight in to supporting our fantastic Flora London Marathon team on Sunday 26th April. I was able to inspire them with a bit about the work I had just seen in the nerve-wracking lead up to the big day and add to the elation of the post Marathon party by sharing more about how their amazing fundraising efforts really were going to help bring about long lasting change in some of the most marginalised communities in India.

Visit our Facebook page to see more photos of my trip.