India: A Watershed In Her Life

By Swapna Majumdar

A quiet transformation is taking place in the backward villages of western Orissa. From being daily wage labourers migrating with their families to eke out a meager living until the last couple of years, women are today not only taking control of their lives but their villages, which are among the poorest in the state.

While the Western Orissa Rural Livelihood Programme (WORLP), in conjunction with the Orissa Development Watershed Mission, a state government initiative, has provided the financial and technical impetus, it is the women who have seized the opportunity. By developing their skills and abilities to address local challenges via self-help groups (SHGs) and watershed committees, they have become agents of economic and environmental change.

In a state prone to recurrent natural disasters like droughts, floods and categorised as a "severely food insecure" region, these women have been empowered to make interventions that have changed their environment. They now restore water bodies, set up grain banks and even take to aquaculture.

Kamalini Patnaik, 35, had spent most of her life cooking and looking after her three children. But her life changed after her village Padampur, in district Nuapada, became a part of the watershed mission and she was elected president of her village watershed committee. So motivated was Patnaik by the faith reposed in her that she decided to tackle rampant alcoholism in her village.

"The sale of liquor had made life unbearable particularly for the women. There were incidents of domestic violence, families would go hungry as the money would be spent on drinking, children were pulled out of schools and it was creating a bad atmosphere in the village. If the sale of liquor could be ended, I knew it would be easier to handle the other problems. This is why I chose it as my first challenge," says Patnaik.

But she soon realised that getting only the women on her side would not be enough. The support of the men was equally important. So she told her village that unless a collective decision to close down the liquor shop was taken, the village would lose out on Rs 42,75,000 (US$1=Rs 41) allocated to them under the watershed project. The money was to be given as grants to very poor families, for sanitation and water projects and for appointing teachers.

"I don't know how she thought of it but her strategy was so effective that the whole community got together to close the shop. She managed to do something no man in our village, including myself, had been able to do," says Vrindaban Patnaik, the 'sarpanch' (village council head).

Patnaik made sure that she fulfilled her end of the promise. She used the development funds to distribute two malaria nets to all the families, appointed school teachers and handed out money to families below the poverty line (BPL) for making toilets. Today, not only has the dropout rate from primary school touched zero, malaria - a critical health problem here - is on the decline. Best of all, incomes have increased after the funds were used to recharge water bodies and check soil erosion.

According to G.B. Reddy, Director, Watershed Mission and Special Secretary, Orissa, involving women as active agents of change rather than passive recipients of welfare has been the prime objective of working with poor communities in Nuapada, Baragarh, Kalahandi and Bolangir, four of the poorest districts in the state. "The project mandates that women must account for 33 per cent of watershed committees. This has had an amazing impact as women have now come out of their homes and are taking part in decision-making," he says.

Demonti Nag, 45, of village Larki, district Komna, used to migrate every year to Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, with her husband and four children to work as daily wage labourers because they could raise only one rainfed crop a year. But after the watershed project began, Nag has stopped migrating. She makes bricks in their own kiln and earns an annual income of Rs 20,000.

Having herself undergone the trauma of skipping meals to feed her family during times of drought and unemployment, Nag has now got together with others in her SHG to take up the challenge of food security. Being a member of the village watershed committee gave Nag the confidence to collaborate with Gram Vikas, a rural development organisation and the mission's local partner, to build a grain bank that has saved many women and children from malnutrition and starvation deaths.

For a state where 48 per cent of women suffer from nutritional deficiency, with the figure rising to 55 per cent for illiterate and poor women (Orissa Human Development Report, 2005) this is a big achievement.

Ratni Puji, 40, a daily wage labourer, never grows tired of expressing her gratitude to Nag and her SHG. Attired in a red sari, a gold necklace around her neck and colourful flowers in her hair, Puji is today preparing to attend a marriage, something she never thought she would be able to do again. Last year, when there was no food to eat for her family, as neither she nor her two sons and husband were able to get work, Puji was preparing to sell her only gold necklace. But Nag bailed her out by lending her grain from the bank. "I thought of selling off my necklace. But Nag convinced me to take a loan from the grain bank and repay it whenever I could. By joining the SHG, I am now no longer dependent on income as a daily wage labourer and know that we will never go hungry again," asserted Puji confidently.

Grain banks have a played a catalytic role in assisting communities, particularly tribal communities surviving at subsistence levels. "They are no longer dependent on moneylenders to tide over difficult periods. We have seen how it has given women the confidence to aspire for better things and push for change," pointed out Sukant Patnaik, development officer, Gram Vikas.
In village Kantapali, Baragarh district, SHG women took an innovative approach to alleviate their economic condition. Of the sum of Rs 15,000 given as loan by the watershed mission, the SHG president Jayanti Dube gave Rs 7,000 to a group of widows to acquire rights to sell kerosene through the Public Distribution System (PDS). Some was invested in taking a pond on a seven-year lease for aquaculture, while the rest was given as loans to its members in the village.

Tarabati Saber, 40, used to grow paddy on small piece of land. But after becoming a member of the watershed committee in Kantapali she learnt that multiple cropping can be an income multiplier. She took a loan and started growing different crops and now earns Rs 15,500 annually. Saber is happy about the increase in income. But what has made her happier is the fact that her husband now listens to her!

Similarly, becoming a member of watershed committee has changed the fortunes of Jamuna Saber, 45, a widow of Malpada village, district Nuapada. Not only did she gain confidence to demand her widow's pension, she learnt to recharge her pond and become economically independent. She now pumps water into her small field to grow different crops and has, for the first time, been able to save money (Rs 11,000), which she then deposited in the local Utkal Grameen Bank. Now, she plans to start pisciculture.

Change for these women is in the air - and in the greening of their land.

(Courtesy: Women's Feature Service)