Experiments in Empowerment

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Full employment and economic self-sufficiency in rural Orissa

It was about two years ago that groups of villages in three pockets in predominantly tribal and poverty stricken districts of Orissa took decisions to plan for full employment. It was their road to empowerment self-determination. I take one village, Sonbaheli, as a case study first.

We had meetings of all villagers, men and women. In every village the meeting went on for hours where the problems of the villages were discussed threadbare. There were very lengthy discussions of the economic situation of the village at which doubts and disagreement were freely expressed. It was only after this exercise that that the villagers unanimously agreed to adopt the plan for full employment.

The facts and figures about the economic situation in Sonbaheli emerged from the discussion being supplied by or ferreted out from the villagers. In Sonbaheli there are 120 families, the population being around 850. There are about 300 men and women in the village in need of employment. It came out in the discussions that they have work for only 60 days in the year in the fields. The village is in a non-irrigated area and the villagers are able to take only one crop of paddy or miner millets like ragi, gurji etc. in a year. A few villagers grow small patches of vegetables with irrigation from wells. Allowing another 30 days for necessary work like house repairing, rope making etc. and another 30 days for social functions, religious holidays etc. the villagers are without work for full eight months, that is, at least 240 days in the year.

It is a traditional practice in these areas for all villagers, both farmers and landless labourers, to meet at the beginning of the agricultural season and fix the daily wage for the season after a thorough discussion. That year this had been fixed at 15 rupees. Calculated at that rate, the loss suffered by 300 able-bodied villagers in 240 days came to a whopping 10,80,000 rupees a year.

We calculated the amount of money that went out of the village for buying daily necessities of life, like clothes, oil, sugar etc. There were next to no industries in the village. The villagers produce some oil at home from local oilseeds for their own use, but this did not meet their need. Each family, on the average, bought 600 rupees worth of oil from the market.

This came to 72,000 rupees per year. A little jaggery or raw sugar and refined sugar were also used. Based on the off take of sugar from the dealer it was calculated that the village consumed 10,000 rupees worth of sugar annually.

The biggest expenditure was on clothing. With a per capita consumption of 12 metres of cloth per head in a year, the total for 850 persons came to 12,000 metres costing 1,53,000 rupees a year.

The calculations were rough and ready, done by the villagers themselves.

They may vary from the actual figures, but the difference is likely to be very small. The expenditure on other items could not be estimated, but that on the three items, oil, sugar and clothing come to 2,38,000 rupees.

There was no time to go into the details of the economics of farming, though the problems of inadequate prices of farm products, high cost of inputs, high rates of interest charged by the money-lenders and the corruption that made the banks of no help were discussed. It was obvious that the actual average income per head from farming was higher than the daily wage of 15 rupees a day. It may well be three times as much, taking into account the amount of food grains stored by the villagers for their own use. The total income is estimated at 800,000 rupees a year, but a third of it is drained away in buying essential goods from outside. This means that the villagers have little surplus with them, no savings at all, and that is the actual condition of the people. A single crop failure sends them to the threshold of starvation.

The villagers could grasp the facts very well. The production of only three items, cloth, sugar and oil in the village would provide one-fourth of the idle labour of the village with work and stop the outflow of the same amount which comes to: 75x15x240= 270,000 rupees. Many other industries could and should be started in the village, such as soap making, manufacture of farming tools and implements by the village blacksmith, bee keeping, pisciculture, animal husbandry and so on. In the course of time even bicycles could be manufactured in villages. Very often people are made to believe that village self-sufficiency and swadeshi would mean acceptance of austerity, a tightening of belt. Simple living certainly means the giving up of consumerism. But the average level of living of the villagers needs to be raised at least five times and this can be achieved by, and only by, khadi, village industries and animal husbandry plus improved farming methods. The products of 72,000 man-days of labour, at 15 rupees a day comes to 1,080,000 rupees, and this would immediately provide the villagers with at least four times the goods they consume today.

But this could be achieved only when the village community resolves to use only goods produced in the village to the exclusion of those produced by centralized factories, those giving protection to the village artisans. The community of Sonbaheli decided to do so. They could grasp the point that by 'buying cheap' they were only cutting each other's throat including her/his own. They had to cultivate the spirit of neighborliness and an economy of affection. It would be a matter of pride to buy things produced by a neighbour even if it is a little costlier and looks a little crude.

When a group of villages joins the movement, as has happened, then there can be division of labour between the villages. A soap making unit or a smithy in each village may not be viable. So the principle of patronizing things produced in one's own village would be extended to include other neighbouring villages.

There are many laws and policies of the Governments, both Central and states, which prohibit people to do something or force them to do something else. For instance there is a law in Orissa that forces farmers to sell sugar cane produced by them to a sugar mill if it is nearby. The farmers are debarred from producing raw sugar (jaggery or gur) by the same law.

Officials often collude with big business to force people to this or that.

Direct action, satyagraha, has to be resorted to uphold the rights and interests of the communities.

The next case study that we take up now started with direct action and came to the full employment idea by that route. Bijapur is a medium sized village in the Nowrangpur district in Orissa. The region had been deeply involved in the freedom movement and scores of people had courted imprisonment. An unproveked firing by the police had taken scores of lives. So the district had a fighting tradition. There was a dilapidated Ashram in the Bijapur village. An elderly lady, Ms. Nayana Majhi and a young worker, Shri Narahari Jani, were running an orphanage for girls there with half-a dozen inmates. One day officials of the Forest Department of the State Government came there and dug pits in about 250 acres of the villagers' farm land for planting eucalyptus trees. These were to be sold to a paper mill when full-grown. Our activist friends were despondent. The villagers would lose all their land and would be forced to migrate, they thought, what would be the use of our looking after these orphans? They discussed this with the villagers. The villagers were afraid of the authorities and dared not do anything against them. Our two friends took the lead in filling up the pits and the villagers followed suit. The police came to arrest the two activists and by now the villagers had shed their fear. About three hundred men and women followed these two to the police station and offered to be arrested. The police were nonplussed and let everybody go. This incident had a far going impact. This plantation project was going on in other contiguous administrative units, the Rural Development blocks also. Earlier the villagers would come stealthily at night and loosen the foots of the plants so that the latter would wither away. But after this Bijapur incident several hundred inhabitants of a village came with trumpets blowing and drums beating and uprooted all the plants defiantly.

This success made the villagers look for other abuses to fight. It was discovered that the revenue official of the area was collecting 'fines' from the farmers for having illegally encroached on Government's land. Actually the villagers have been cultivating the land for decades. According to the law the land ought to have been settled in the name of the farmers after the payment of a small royalty, but the villagers had been ignorant of the law and the land revenue officials had been exploiting this ignorance to fill their pockets.

It was found out that the previous year some 16,000 rupees had been collected from the villagers as 'fines', but receipts had been given for say ten rupees where a hundred had been collected. The villagers decided to have recourse to direct action. They sent a delegation to the local revenue officer, approached the District Magistrate. They created enough pressure on the Revenue Officer to force him to return 12,000 rupees to the villagers saying that the rest have been spent and requested the villagers to leave him in peace.

Naturally this success had a wide spread impact. All the surrounding villages stopped paying 'fines.' Karagaon, a neighbouring village much larger than Bijapur, had been paying something like 90,000 to 95,000 rupees a year before this. The stoppage of the extortion had a visible effect on the villages. The children wore better clothes, everybody ate better food, the homes looked better maintained.

These successes whetted the villagers' appetite for more. There is a large tank in the village that was dug on village land by a grant from Vinoba's Land Gift Movement. The Government had no jurisdiction on it. Yet the local authorities had leased it to a contractor for three years for pisciculture. The villagers took action. They did not allow the contractor to enter the village and no one went to work for him. Ultimately a compromise was reached. Half of the fish caught was taken by the contractor so that he did not suffer any loss and was enabled to recoup the license fee. The villagers took the other half.

The women of the village had become organized in a Women's Committee under the guidance of Ms Nayana Majhi. These were different from such committees organized by official development agencies, were fully autonomous and independent of all official connections and interference.

They had created a fund by collecting ten rupees per month from its members from which the members took loans and engaged themselves in small enterprises like paddy dehiscing and selling the rice, making pancakes and puffed rice to be sold on market days, making clay toys and so on. The Women's Committee of Bijapur decided to lend a hand. Its members collected 6,000 rupees from among themselves and friends and bought 5,000 rupees worth of fingerlings, which were stocked in the big tank that the villagers had wrested from the officials and two other small ones. One thousand rupees were paid to a watchman. A year later, in 1999, the fish were caught and sold. Fishermen had to be hired from outside for catching the fish as none in the village knew the technique.

They took about 4,000 rupees in wages. The fish fetched 28,000 rupees in the market and there was a net saving of 18,000 rupees that was deposited in a post office saving bank account. The next season they stocked twice the quantity of fingerlings in two dams, the big one and one small. They expect to have a net saving of around 56,000 rupees. We have to receive the report yet.

The women of the village had also engaged in an anti-drink drive. Illicit distilleries were destroyed by the women campaigners who also confronted the police and excise officials who were allowing illicit distillation by taking bribes. This movement also spread to the neighboring villages and all these are now largely free from the drink habit. There are only a very few who drink clandestinely.

Some villages, having asserted their rights over the village forests have begun planting useful trees. All these successes boosted the self-confidence of the villagers immensely, so that when the ideas of village self-government and full employment were mooted the villagers responded enthusiastically. There was a prolonged discussion as at Sonbaheli. It was decided to take up three village industries first for self-reliance: oil, sugar and cloth. After a year there has been good progress in the case of the first two. Farmers now do not sell their sugar cane to the mill that used to buy their produce. They manufacture raw sugar and sell it locally. Interestingly the villagers now use gur or raw sugar in their tea in the place of refined sugar. Oil seeds are being collected for the extraction of oil. Soap making has been introduced.

Fifty spinning wheels have been procured and villagers are growing their own cotton. There are very skilled weavers and looms in a neighbouring village, but there has been some delay in procuring parts for repairing some of the spinning wheels and some pre-processing machineries. Only a few of the spinning wheels are in use. The khadi programme is yet to go into top gear. What is remarkable that the people have been able to mobilize tens of thousand rupees of capital by using their own savings and idle manpower. In other villages people have dependency syndrome. They expect the Government or some voluntary agency to provide the money for whatever needs to be done in their villages.

Vested interests, traders, liquor merchants, corrupt officials etc. of the area are trying to stop the movement or divert it by lodging criminal cases against the workers, by trying to bribe them, diverting their attention, and creating factions among the villagers, but have not been successful. The morale and commitment continues to be high.

There are four such clusters of villages in Orissa. A fifth is coming up in the area hit by the super-cyclone. The progress has been uneven, but the endeavour continues.

Here are some interesting facts about the Bijapur cluster of villages.

There are twelve villages in the cluster with a population of around ten thousand. Grama Sabhas or village councils have been constituted in 10 of them. Six villages have community funds. Women's Committees have been formed in all of them. The Women's Committees in have their own funds in six villages as follows.

1. Bijapur Rs. 12,000
2. Haldiguda (20 bags of paddy) Rs. 5,000
3. Dangriguda Rs. 12,000
4. Koilari Rs. 28,000
5. Saraguda Rs. 25,000
6. Kenduguda Rs. 22,000

• Total Rs. 104,000

Economic Empowerment of Tribal Women in India : A Case Study from Swadhina

Swadhina's journey began at Calcutta in 1986 on 29 December at a gathering of around 150 women. The organisation is a collective dream of a group of women and men with years of experience in social action with primary focus of working towards women's self-reliance as the term `Swadhina' translated literally would mean in English.

Swadhina Actions : The Basis

Swadhina actions are based on the following beliefs that :

• women form half of the population, hence they have a far greater role to play in the liberation of the human kind.
• the mainstream ideology of Modernisation/Development that our country and many other developing countries embarked upon did not in reality bring about the desired result. On the other hand it systematically brought down the status of women and other sections (i.e. tribals, dalits) whereby their oppression doubled and drudgery increased.
• awareness generation and people's organisation, whereby both women and men participate, are the two primary pre-requisites for social change.
• empowerment is about people, a process where both women and men take control of their own lives with increased self-confidence leading to self-reliance.
• finally only people themselves can change their own situation so that they no longer function as passive recepients of imposed conditions and regulations.

Need for Women's Economic Empowerment:

In the Indian society from the day a girl is born she is under the power and influence of her father; as soon as she crosses the threshold of her infancy she too attends the school like her brothers but is soon forced to give up her studies and concentrate on the household chores because education is never considered to be her forte. And then what follows inevitably is her marriage - with a lot of dowry.There again she is under the control of her husband - her activities further restricted to the four walls of the kitchen where she continues to slog till she reaches her deathbed. This post marital life is ofcourse punctuated by a number of attempts to attain motherhood - some of which are successful while the others are not. And if she is able to "ring the bells of heaven" in any such endeavours she is "lucky" enough, having saved herself from further oppressions.

If we try and analyse the life of an average, rural Indian woman we will find that economic situation of a woman plays a vital and decisive role. Why is a woman not given proper and adequate education? It is because of the belief that a woman can never play the role of a bread earner for the family and her activites are anyway going to be limited to the domestic front. A woman's health is also much ignored on the same grounds - that she is not the bread earner for the family and hence her health may well be neglected.Women have been deliberately subjugated on the basis of their economic handicap. Men have always thrust their opinion and ideas on women on the basis of the statement, "….we have always been the bread earners and hence the decision making power belongs to us".

Why is the bride's family compelled to pay heavy amount of dowry? It is again due to economic reasons. The bitter truth is that the money acts as a compensation for food and clothing for the bride at her in-laws place since it is believed that a woman cannot provide for herself.

Economic empowerment is not just about money power, it is about Self Reliance, it is about Self Confidence. So empowering involves three aspects - one, to bring awareness that women can and are capable of being economically self reliant -whether for themselves or their family at large; secondly to help them understand the idea of equality so that they can protest against discriminations (as in the case of unequal wages) and thirdly, stimulate them to inculcate a system of effective utilisation of money. To be economically self reliant is thus a big challenge for a woman. What she does not realise is that economic control is yet another of the means a male dominated society resorts to in order to subjugate women. It is important for them to keep the women under control because every empowered woman is a threat to male dominance in the society.

Towards Economic Empowerment of Women in Orissa:

Swadhina is presently working in four states of the country - West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Tamil Nadu. This case study is Swadhina's involvement towards empowerment of tribal women in the remote rural areas of Orissa where Swadhina has worked in around 90 villages in the districts of Mayurbhanj, Rayagada and Dhenkanal for nearly 7 years now.

Orissa is one of the very backward states of the country having a large section of tribal population living in the hilly forest areas. The state has a large number of people living in abject poverty. At the same time being a rich store house of mineral and other natural resources the state has undergone largescale industrialisation in the past few decades.

As happened elsewhere in the world, here too the blessings of `modernization' development had been massive deforestation and displacement of many people with the disastrous break down of the life support system. Poor as they already were now lost control of and access to a wide variety of resources on which they have depended for ages.In the three districts where Swadhina is working people are mostly agricultural workers. Most of them are landless who during the rainy season migrate to the neighbouring districts to work for the big landholders. They live in temporary huts and return to their respective village when the cultivation is over. Rest of the year they collect different types of forest produce which they sale for income. This has specifically and adversely affected the lives of women increasing manifold their daily drudgery. Such displacement, non-access, non-possession, non-entitlement further thrust them to a situation of mute acceptance. Women have always remained invisible, forgotten, unrecognized. Now they have lost the most gaining very little.

At the same time it is interesting to note that the tribal society is much different from the so called modern society. At the earlier days their society was much more equal and just in their dealings with women. Women have always worked equally with men and have earned respect. But of course their society was plagued with a number of myths and superstitions. Gradually they came in contact with the so-called `civilised' society and the women began to lose the position of equality that they have been enjoying so far while the vices like superstition stayed on. As days passed the tribal women began to be pushed behind men, as their counterparts in the outer society. Along with this women became more and more victims of the evergrowing superstitions within their society. As contacts with the outer world increased their men began to venture outside their boundary for work while the women were those " who could work but could not earn". If they would go out to work they faced immense discrimination in terms of attitude of their employers as well as in terms of wage that they received (which was almost always lesser than their men folk). Moreover most of the time these earnings were taken away by their husbands who used this money for drinking and other such vices.

In the context of Orissa thus the challenges towards women's economic empowerment are on one hand to strengthen the rural economy to eradicate poverty and on the other to bring about an attitudinal change in women that "they can and are capable of" being self- reliant breaking the myth of a weak woman, a woman without voice and change it into the strong and capable voice of an empowered woman.

We believe that the process of empowerment begins with organising women at the grass roots, help them enhance their analytical power to identify and analyse the issues that affect their lives and take up actions around those. The much promised benefits of development has never `trickled down' to the poor, rather it has created multiple forms of dependence. The challenge therefore is to strengthen the self-sustaining local systems, re-establish people's faith in the wealth of indigenous knowledge for self-development.

Formation of women's organisation: In each working village there is a village level women's organisation which plays a pivotal role in the local development. Through repeated trainings the women are oriented on social issues, equipped in leadership skills.

Gradually they gain confidence and assume responsibilties for all the development activities initiated. The process of empowerment starts in their mind, in their attitudes and value system and judgements. Ultimately when Swadhina withdraws they continue to work as local village level organisation.

Skill Training: Skill trainings were organised merely to enhance the level of perfection of these arts and skills. Also these trainings taught them to make effective utilisation of their skills - towards economic empowerment. Such trainings also developed in them the interest to rejuvenate their gradually decaying skills and arts of their culture. It is not imposing any alien economic venture on women rather after identification of the local skill, availability of raw materials, the women's groups decide which type of activity will be pursued.

In Khetrapatna village in Mayurbhanj district Patra community members are traditionally weavers but in course of time their income degenerated since what they produced simply could not compete with the other products in the market.Women from this village participated in a special weaving training where they learnt new designs which will have better prospect of sale.

Loans for Self-help: Women have greater enthusiasm in starting small business; for instance in the rural areas women find much interest in ventures like poultry, pig rearing, rice husking etc. However the greatest problem is financial.The illiterate men and women face maximum exploitation at the hand of the money lenders on whom they traditionally depend for loan and hence the villagers always avoid encounter with the money lenders. From Swadhina small loans were given to women which they used for productive purposes.

Special trainings were conducted to guide them in this regard, especially on the business management tactics; they were also elaborated on the process of obtaining loans, rate of return etc.

Sakahar Marandi is a mother of three children who runs her small shop at the village market. She is a 28 year old tribal woman who had gone to school but left after the primary level. Once she was hospitalised having a tumour which had to be operated immediately. She needed around Rs.3000/- for the treatment and, thus applied for a loan from her village women's savings fund. Though in the fund she herself had saved only Rs.500/- the women's committee approved the loan. The operation was successful. She is now completely cured and have slowly repaid the loan. Later she took another loan to start the shop. Shakhar is a proud and confident woman now running the shop shedding all inhibitions and shyness.

But it is not business and money making which bring the women together, they rather invest in social relations. At Masharda village in Mayurbhanj the Kalandi community members are traditionally bamboo basket makers. They are considered `untouchables'. Here a group of 19 women got a loan of Rs.100/- with which they purchased bamboo. It takes longer time for them to understand and learn the maintenance of production record, cost and profit calculation. While working together in the open field they share with each other the joys and sorrows of life. Important information is announced like next date for the pregnant mothers check up camps etc. This stress on the value of group sharing as opposed to the dominant capitalistic value of individual profiteering is very vital for any economic empowerment process.

To be the best by pushing others out is a norm in capitalist economy. The non-violent values of fellowship, concern for others, feeling with nature and other non-commercial approaches are ridiculed as outdated. But any social and economic empowerment effort is bound to be a failure if it does not simultaneously emphasise on value promotion which will ultimately sustain and strengthen the process of empowerment initiated. The village based people's organisations too can degenerate into institutions abusing power. Therefore it is very important to emphasise on the value of accountability.

Savings Promotion: The task is not over with generation of some income. In order to remain economically secure what rural women need is not just regular income but also a good amount of savings which may help them to sustain themselves. Women are thus encouraged to save money in the group fund out of which they can apply for loan for initiating a small business or to meet any emergency situation at the family.Rural banks/post offices being located in far off distances they never dreamt of saving money in a formal system. Secondly, rural people having had bitter experiences in the past do not trust "outsiders" with their money. So the challenge was to build a system which would operate within the rural conext within women's group.

Formation of the savings fund, run and managed by the women themselves, has thus brought immense relief to the women and through them to the whole community. They have now been released from the clutches of the local merciless money lenders who for ages have continued to exploit and oppress the poor villagers. Presently there are 90 Women's Savings Groups having total of around Rs.300,000/- saved in the fund.

Promotion of Sustainable Agriculture:

Agriculture has been commercialised with promotion of cash crops and introduction of machines and use of chemicals which also means external dependence. Farming for health is the concept which therefore is being promoted. Women are encouraged to grow new variety of nutritious vegetables, fruits at their homes which will cater to the health need of the family members at the same time they can earn money by selling the surplus. Community Nurseries jointly owned by the community and developed on a piece of land offered by the villagers are also encouraged which will continually supply seeds/ saplings to the families.

Awareness Programmes- When Swadhina initiated its work among women it was found that most women though eager, were hesitant to come forward because the societal values had led them to believe that women were incapable of being economically strong. So the challenge was to make the society around the women believe in their capabilities as well as to develop the same belief in the women about themselves. The work was indeed difficult because to break age old myths and beliefs was a herculean task. Awareness programmes thus became the critical step towards empowerment - rallies, awarenss camps, trainings etc. became a regular feature of Swadhina's village groups.

The Constraints:

There are many constraints towards women's empowerment which can be summarised as below :

• In the production process conflict with the vested interest is bound to take place.
• Finding appropriate marketing avenue is aserious problem.
• Women's expenditure pattern may replicate rather than counter gender inequalities.
• Women may employ daughters and daughter-in-laws as unpaid family labour.
• Often women do not necessarily benefit from their increased contribution to household well-being.
• Access to income may be at the cost of heavier work loads.

The Hope:

There has been definite positive changes in household and community perceptions of women's role, as well as changes at the individual level. There is greater mobility and increased confidence in women who previously were wholly dependent on their husbands and many of them had not been engaged earlier in any economic activities outside the home for fear of social disapproval. Many superstitious beliefs have been eradicated. The number of women showing interest in the literacy centres too has increased.There are now many women with special skills like the health workers in Dhenkanal who are working as expert midwives in the area. In return to their service they get a cloth, vegetables and rice, sometimes also money. These women now have the skill and confidence to sustain themselves through their service to the community.

Empowerment does not happen overnight. It takes a long time to reach that state of refinement in the inner life through non-violent means which can never be measured by the material possessions. Mahatma Gandhi said that non-violence is a process of conversion, the conversion, if achieved, must be permanent. Any society or a nation constructed non-violently must be able to withstand attack upon its structure from without or within.The women with whom we have worked all these years will surely inspire many more women towards economic empowerment leading to qualitative improvement in life whereby they feel confident in the dignity of being themselves, enjoy the right to be themselves and not just in successful generation and accumulation of material wealth. Together in their newly felt inner power they refuse to be passive victims but actively create and shape their own future.

Courtesy: Autonomous Development, Raff Carmen