PRADAN, MADHYA PRADESH

ir bole hum SHG banayen,
bir bole hum SHG banayen
batte bole hum SHG banayen
aur hum banayen ‘sakhi samiti’
(with due apologies to Amitabh Bachchan and Samir Garg)

That, and ‘murga farm’ was what we had heard about PRADAN at Kesla, before we got here. From Khandwa we came to Itarsi and took a 45 minutes ride in a rickety 14-seater jeep to Suktawa. Over the next few days, we learnt that there was much more happening here than SHGs and murga.

PRADAN works in about 97 hamlets hemmed in, in between the Suktawa/ Tawa rivers, the Bori tiger sanctuary (some villages are actually within the sanctuary) and the Proof Testing Range, Taku. The population comprised largely of adivasi communities – Gond and Khorku. The initial work started in the late 80’s was on non-farm livelihoods – poultry, mushroom and small industries, with women. Organised SHGs began almost a decade later and has today reached saturation in these 97 hamlets.

Day 1, after a brief discussion with Madhu, we landed in Chowkipura village with KVS and met Savitrabai. Articulate and confident she told us about Narmada Mahila Samiti, the SHGs in her village and in neighbouring villages, the cluster level samiti and Narmada Mahila Sangh – a federation of all SHGs in the area. The groups meet each week, while the cluster and federation level meetings are held each month. They are helped by an ‘accountant’ (a local educated youth) who helps them keep their records in order, and who each member pays Rs.5/ month on average. Savitribai told us about how their lives have changed, the freedom form moneylenders, the additional income from activities such as poultry. How their children were now able to go to school, eat and clothe better. We were beginning to believe that this was all money talk, when Savitiri bai took us by surprise and said ‘hum sabne milkar shasan banaya’ and went on to cite examples of how they approached and addressed issues of conflicts in villages, especially when it came to rallying around women who were getting a raw bargain in their families or in the community. There were cases of domestic violence being resolved as well efforts to stop alienation from property.

We walked around the village and saw several poultry sheds, whitewashed, sturdy, with shiny drinkers and feeders, in red plastic, hanging from the roofs. 60 women in Chowkipura itself have involved themselves in the business – constituting a sixth of the women in the poultry business. They made it sound deceptively simple – the 45 day cycle of growth of a 300 chick batch. They are helped along by Kesla Poultry Samiti - KPS, which provides standardised raw materials, daily feed for the chicken (there is a feed mill at PRADAN’s campus at Kesla which is managed by KPS), does immunisation and treatment of birds, and buys the hens from them once they grow. There is a supervisor appointed by KPS for each cluster of producers, who conducts daily checks of the chicken, stocks feed and medicines, coordinates and keeps detailed records of inputs and outputs. KPS ensures process standardisation and keeps the women shielded from market fluctuations, as it happened during the ‘bird flu’ threat. KPS suffered that year, but has recovered since.

While poultry has been the most successful activity so far, and is increasing in scale, other activities have also met with a fair degree of success. Over 160 women are involved in mushroom cultivation. There isn’t much expansion planned in the immediate, till a larger market is identified. While they supply sun dried, cut mushroom to Hindustan Lever for Knorr soups now, they are looking to tie up with other companies as well.

About 60 women are involved in mulberry sericulture, and over the past few years eri sericulture has been introduced with castor plantations to provide for feed for the worms. Similar in process to mulberry sericulture, the big difference is that castor is a much more robust plant which grows well in undulating hilly areas and rainfed conditions. PRADAN is the only organisation to have been given the project by the Department of Sericulture to undertake eri culture. The attention to detailing was striking, as we visited several farmers with Amjad in the Dandivada cluster. There was a large meeting of farmers with oilseeds experts from Hyderabad and Department of Sericulture officials during our visit. If this was any indication of the level of seriousness, almost all 400 farmers involved in the enterprise attended.

Interestingly in the past few years, there is also greater attention to land based activities. Linking with food for work schemes and EPCO scheme (of the Union Ministry of Forest and Environment) for bio villages, work has been started in several villages. We visited Pipalpura where a range of measures for soil and water conservation have been undertaken – field bunds, 5% treatment, contour trenches, horticulture, etc. So far treatment has been done on the basis of individual holdings, rather than on the ‘geo-topographic area’, with 55 of the 60 farmers in the village involved. Given the experience over the past year, there is a felt need to approach treatment on an area basis, rather than with individual farmers.

Economics of empowerment

The organisation structure of PRADAN is lean, and all professionals work directly with women’s groups. PRADAN routes all its activities through women. Men are informed and involved. Some of them are more involved than others, as the ‘service providers’. The concept of ‘service providers’ is recent in PRADAN’s frame. We were given to understand that women choose the ‘service providers’ based on some desirable criteria for the particular activity, and remuneration/incentive is paid to ‘service providers’ is by the women’s group. Given physical limitations to visits/ interactions of professionals there is a fair level of reliance on ‘service providers’ by PRADAN. From what we understand, all ‘accountants’ and ‘service providers’ are men. Would it be necessary for PRADAN to build women’s capacities (skills/ knowledge/ aptitude) to take up these responsibilities? Or can it be safely assumed that the women can as a group have adequate negotiation capacity vis-à-vis these men? Will they be able to keep the controls, without these men taking over?

PRADAN’ approach is clearly is one of techno-managerial interventions towards livelihoods promotion. There is an endeavour to develop a variety of livelihoods solutions and design appropriate backward and forward linkages. A majority of activities are in line with government schemes and work towards developing market linkages. How far do these spin beyond the obvious and lead to empowerment of women in economic and social spheres? From what we saw, women are quite vocal, articulate, and knowledgeable about the economic activities. We were unable, however, to fathom the extent of impact of creating this space for women, on household and social dynamics. From discussions we understood that these issues are rarely discussed in formal meetings of PRADAN – be it schooling of children (limited options after class five), health concerns, or political representation (in NBA areas we saw a conscious efforts in the Mandleshwar area to promote women as Sarpanch). Would it be correct to say that through working with women, on almost an individual basis and through a very efficient approach of economic empowerment, PRADAN is successful in enhancing women’s capacities and confidence, so much that without any formal engagement in social aspects, women themselves are able to exercise their initiative to resolve issues within their own contexts?

The issue of creation of formal spaces for addressing social issues notwithstanding, what PRADAN is doing is clearly not a ‘mere’ economic intervention. It is consciously breaking several social and economic barriers and enabling women explore spaces which they might never have had – as producers, as owners, as entrepreneurs.

Hugely influenced by the NBA experience, we were left wondering if it might be necessary for PRADAN to relate to a wider range of issues beyond the creation of livelihoods. The villages are located in a very vulnerable belt. The dam and missile proof testing range (and ordinance factory a few kilometres away) have displaced people from their residences and livelihoods. The sanctuary and even a possible oil find by ONGC threaten to displace even further. People are apparently aware of these, though the nature of information and understanding varies from person to person. The lingering question is are they (or even PRADAN) equipped to cut through the web of limited and often misleading information which typically accompanies such projects and invest time, energy, resources into the struggle. PRADAN does not have a stated policy on intervening in this sphere, though the position taken sounds like - if displacement is effected there will be efforts to negotiate suitable rehabilitation and resettlement, rather than obstruct displacement per se. The strength comes from people having developed skills and capacities and organised into formations, which make them less vulnerable. Perhaps when the time comes, they will come together and work towards better bargains.