India’s women are struggling for survival in a world where the physical resources they have traditionally depended on for survival are rapidly degrading and diminishing in the face of intense population and industrial pressures. Though they are all economically active, they have not yet acquired the skills necessary to make an adequate living in an industrialising economy. According to India’s Nobel laureate for developmental economics Amartya Sen, organisation of women to experiment with forms of constructive dissent, raise questions regarding their state and society, and helping them arrive at answers is a natural guarantor of development.

Role of women and self-governance in Kashipur – India’s and the world’s poorest district

Kashipur in the eastern state of Orissa, hardly seems an appropriate stage for one of the most distressing dramas of human exploitation, and collective deprivation of basic human rights of an entire community. Kashipur, along with her sister districts of Bolangir and Koraput, has the dubious distinction of being among the ten most backward districts in the India and the world.

Nevertheless, with a literacy rate of a shocking 1 – 2 per cent, the tribes of Kashipur have neither the means of protest, or indeed, even the awareness, that they are being deprived of their basic fundamental rights, guaranteed to every citizen of this country, by the highest legal order of the land. Kashipur saw its first woman Sarpanch, or elected head of Gram Panchayat in 2001, when the 28 year-old Champa Devi was unanimously selected for the post. She was the obvious choice even for men, as she held the most advanced education, having completed class seven at the local government school. Champa Devi’s first project was to organise access to credit in order to stimulate economic development. Fair credit is a unanimous demand in almost every Indian village. When families earn the minimum for day-to-day survival, times of emergency or social obligations like marriages and deaths can mean lifelong debts.

With the assistance of “Agragamee”, a UNICEF-funded NGO based in Kashipur, Champa Devi established a women’s group called the “Ama Sangathan” or Our Organisation. The two organisations started by attempting to help its members get loans from nationalised banks but it quickly became apparent how ill-equipped both the women and the formal institutions were, to deal with one another. Most women could not fill out withdrawal and deposit slips, could not understand which queues to stand in, and were unable to sign their names. Sometimes their names changed from visit to visit, as they might give their husband or parent’s names. It clearly demonstrated how irrelevant these formalities were within their own communities, where verbal dealings were the known means of agreement.

Champa Devi and Agragamee realised that what they needed was their own banks. In one of the most innovative solutions for rural credit, they overcame the problem of illiteracy by arranging an agreement to use women’s photographs instead of signatures on their passbooks. They disregarded advice that a bank for poor, illiterate women would be suicidal, and claim better recovery rates and higher profit margins than most formal institutions. Now their model is being promoted by women’s organizations around the world! There is a sense of frustration about the forces that mire these women in poverty, they understand that change is a process of struggles and they are beginning to acquire an empowering sense of identity and confidence, that based on their experiences and determination, they can solve their own problems.

The women’s groups also quickly realised that these rural peasant women found formal banking hours inconvenient due to their work schedules. In another innovative solution to bridge the modern and traditional worlds, they overcame this problem by arranging to send out volunteer bank workers to the women’s neighbourhoods and workplaces, to collect savings and loan installments. Early on in its banking experience, the Ama Sangathan conducted research to find out why some women were defaulting on loan repayments. They were alarmed to find out that 20 of the 500 women surveyed had died, and 15 of those deaths were due to complications during childbirth. The two immediate reasons identified were tetanus due to inadequate medical care and the need for income. If they had no savings and no maternity benefit, they could not leave work for childbirth. It became clear that these poor, self-employed women, engaged in rolling bidis or working in the fields, needed a way to protect themselves from risks of childbirth, and find a way to eat and feed their family during the period of delivery.

The Panchayat aided by Champa Devi strongly believed that society as a whole was responsible for the welfare of children, and not the poor mother alone. However, when the government’s LIC (Life Insurance Corporation) rejected their call for the public support of these women as unprofitable, the Ama Sangathan initiated their own prenatal services. At the time of conception, the expecting mother would register for maternity care services at the Ama Sangathan by paying a nominal fee of Rs. 15. The money would be collectively deposited in the rural bank, and at the time of her delivery, the new mother would be given a stipend of Rs. 100 and a kilo of ghee. In addition, the Agragamee also helps to initiate training courses for dais or midwifes in rural areas.

“The tribals have a most unhealthy custom of laying a newborn on a bed of wet cow-dung,” says Sagarika Ghosh, a health worker at the Ama Sangathan, in an interview in June 2002. “The new mothers would also subsist on just rice and salt for months after birth, and bathe the infants even 4-5 times a day.” These practices naturally resulted in a high infant and maternal mortality rate. Issues of health, sanitation and hygiene, which are all too often neglected by male Sarpanchs in favour of infrastructural development projects like constructing new buildings, are given the urgent importance they deserve by women heads. The health and nutrition programme of the NGOs focuses on educating the mothers on the benefits of breastfeeding, immunisation, antenatal care and various diet supplements. There has also been a marked rise in safer deliveries, with trained dais monitoring the procedure.

Lokendra Singh Kot