Having spent my whole life in the seaside city of Thiruvanathapuram in the coastal state of Kerala, my exposure to any part of India other than Tamil Nadu and Kerala was only through media. For the same reason, an opportunity to do my summer project in a small town in Rajasthan was something that I did not want to lose. The sheer novelty of the whole experience that I was expecting from the project was what attracted me.
In Dholpur, Pradan’s activities are focused mainly on two areas: 1) Forming and fostering Self Help Groups (SHG), and, 2) Managing the diary co-operative, the New Generation Cooperative (NGC) being managed jointly by the National Diary Development Board (NDDB), Mother Diary and Pradan.
The title of my project was ‘an assessment of the credit needs and savings potential of SHG members in Dholpur, Rajasthan’. Through my interactions with the project executives I learnt that a formal kind of research with a questionnaire or a pen and paper would not yield the desired results. They advised me to do my research through informal interactions with the villagers. I was convinced that it is going to be great fun to hop through villages in jugads, tractors, trucks, and the overloaded buses. “These coming weeks will teach you something that no management books or corporate career can teach you. Welcome to the rural India, the real India.” Those words of Mr. Shouvik Mitra, the team leader at Pradan, Dholpur were echoing in my mind.
As days progressed more and more of the lives of rural people were unfolding. Apparently happy and satisfied with what they have I was realizing the extent of their miseries as I probed further into their lives.
“Our Madrasi Babu (I was rechristened so because my name did not make any sense to these villagers) has a heap of dry seeds with him. Each seed stands for Rs 1000. Now each of you decide how much bank loan you want and then go to Madrasi Babu and collect an equivalent number of seeds from him. Do not let anyone else see how many seeds you are collecting.” Mrs. Sumita Kasana, my project guide, was addressing the weekly meeting of Santoshi Mata Mahila Vikas Samiti of Khirana. I was witnessing an SHG meeting for the first time. I was surprised at the number of seeds each woman was taking. Some of them took as much as 80 seeds which translate to Rs 80,000!! Isn’t that a huge amount for these people? I wondered why they wanted so much money. I thought they might be planning to invest these amounts to some income generating purposes. Once the seed collection was over, all of us seated ourselves on the ground in a circle. That’s how the SHG members have to be seated whenever they meet. My guide started asking each member how many seeds she had and for what she was planning to utilize the money. I was in for further surprises.
Every woman said they wanted the money to pay back their existing debts. I later learned that this SHG had received a previous loan which was also utilized for the same purpose. Now that they had paid back the bank loan they are eagerly awaiting their next bank loan which they intended to give to the local money lenders and the dudiyas (milkmen), who were their external sources of credit. So where did their previous loan go? Though they had utilized the whole of their previous loan to repay their external debt why were they taking such huge amounts for the same purpose? I wondered. By the time they had repaid their bank loans they had accumulated further debts which were surprisingly more than their previous debts. Their accumulated external debts were increasing year by year.
Ideally the SHG kitty should be growing and the members’ need for other external sources of loans should come down. But this was not happening here. Let us analyze the case of Shimlesh, a member of Santoshi Mata Mahila Vikas Samiti, and find out the pit falls for ourselves.
Shimlesh and family belong to the jatav community. Her household consists of 7 members: her husband, her daughter, two brothers in law, her niece, her mother in law and herself. The sources of income for this family are her husband and brother in law’s wage from stone mining and the sales proceeds of milk from the two buffaloes they own. Her husband and brother in law receive a one time wage payment for the whole year. A major chunk of this amount goes into repayment of debts to the moneylenders. The little that is left goes into agriculture expenditure. The sales proceeds from milk do not remain constant throughout the year. During the lull season they have to depend on external credit for sustaining themselves as well as the buffaloes. Most of the year they depend on external credit because they are tied to the moneylenders and their earnings mainly go into its repayment. And in turn again they are forced to go for credit and the cycle goes on. They do not have any savings apart from the weekly savings of Rs 10 that they deposit in the SHG kitty. Any contingencies or social occasions like marriage they go for credit.
In such a scenario they are forced to go for credit because the SHG kitty is not sufficient enough to satisfy their needs. And moreover the credit from money lenders has the tendency to multiply because of the exorbitant interest rates and their repeated borrowings.
A Self Help Group (SHG) is an informal association consisting of 10 – 19 rural poor women, from socio-economically homogeneous families. SHGs are organised around the activity of savings and credit with mainly two objectives:
Increasing the rural women's access to cheap credit in the short run, and
Economic empowerment of rural women in the long run.
The ultimate purpose is to create an impact on the livelihoods of rural poor. SHG also helps women build on their capabilities and provides a common platform for the members to think and plan their collective betterment, both financially and socially.
In Dholpur, most of the SHGs (around 87%) formed and fostered by Pradan were formed under the District Poverty Initiatives Project (DPIP). The government of Rajasthan, with the support of the World Bank, is implementing the DPIP in seven districts of the state, namely Baran, Churu, Dausa, Dholpur, Jhalawar, Rajsamand & Tonk with the long-term goal to reduce poverty in the selected districts, which are amongst the poorest in the state. The project’s specific development objectives are to improve the living standards and the social and economic status of the poor. For this purpose, the project will organize and empower the poor, build their capacities, and improve their access to infrastructure, services and resources that address their priority social and economic needs.
The main approaches of the project are to generate awareness in the target villages, form Common Interest Groups (CIGs) of poor people in the village communities, build their capacities and help them to decide, formulate and implement sub-projects aimed at alleviating their poverty.
Pradan is one of the implementing agencies under DPIP engaged in forming CIGs. The Pradan team implements mainly two activities namely buffalo rearing and goat rearing. The other activities being implemented are irrigation and improvement of crop productivity. All activities are carried out by Common Interest Groups (CIGs). Pradan team first organizes women from poor families into Self Help Group (SHGs). To suit DPIP’s condition, the SHGs were recast into CIGs by bringing together the SHG members based on their interest in a particular livelihood activity.
But the haste with which the government officials wanted the SHGs to be formed and get linked with the banks did not facilitate proper fostering of the SHGs. The villagers came together and formed SHGs keeping an eye on the benefits of DPIP rather than to save money and form a healthy kitty.
For the same reason, what happened was the condition of socio economic homogeneity of the members was not strictly followed. Moreover the incentive to save and increase the kitty was missing among most of the SHGs. I observed that once the kitty grew and reached a point the members distributed it among themselves. This act ensured that the kitty never grew beyond a point and their needs are not met by the kitty. Even after 3-4 years in the SHG these women still had to go to the moneylenders or the dudhiya for credit and the amount of external debts was having an increasing trend rather than a decreasing one.
The haste with which the government wanted to implement the DPIP program actually hampered the growth of the SHGs and the whole purpose was lost. Here the SHGs were formed for availing benefits under the DPIP and once the women got the benefits they were losing interest in remaining in the SHGs. They went back to money lenders again and again.
The solution for such a state of affairs would be to motivate the members to increase their kitty and make them aware of how a growing kitty can save them from the money lenders. Its not that the members are not aware of all these, but, they seem to be eager to distribute the accumulated savings among themselves because a feeling of insecurity sets in when the kitty grows big. This feeling of insecurity is again because of the lack of socio-economic homogeneity in the groups.
Interestingly, the problems where being faced by only those groups which were formed after the commencement of DPIP. The older groups where functioning in a healthy manner. An SHG requires slow and gradual fostering and only after the reach a certain level of maturity should they be linked to a bank. A habit of saving should be developed. I saw that the members where saving only the minimum savings of Rs 10 per week. Even when they had the ability to save more than that they did not do that. Such issues have to be addressed. Probably an incentive for making voluntary savings would help.
My experience at Dholpur have given me lot of insights about the rural life, poverty, the functioning of SHGs, and the implementation of the so called ‘poverty alleviation initiatives’ of the government. The hospitality I received in the villages was very warm and cordial. Even with the very little that they have they made sure that their ‘Madrasi Babu’ is treated with the best of their delicacies. Even in the midst of financial crises they had a smile on their face which wasn’t a ‘plastic’ smile that we urbanites usually have. I believe each of us should work with the rural India at least once in their life because that is the real India and its each citizen’s responsibility to do something for this deprived pie of the population.
Jose Brinner
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