25 YEARS OF INDIAS NEW MIDDLE WOMEN

By Moin Qazi

We live in a world in which impoverished women face gross inequalities and

injustice from birth to death. From poor education to poor nutrition to
vulnerable and low pay employment, the sequence of discrimination is very
hard, but all too common. They face significant constraints in maximizing
their

But there are also silvery strands in this dark discourse. Given an
opportunity to fight hunger and poverty, a poor woman turns out to be a
better fighter than a poor man. It has been our experience that poor women
have an innate and intense drive to move up; they are hardworking,
concerned about their human dignity, concerned about their childrens
present and future, and willing to make personal sacrifices for the well-being
of their family .

Over the years several strategies have been used to empower women .One
of them relies on community groups whose members can be trained and
equipped to use their collective strength and wisdom to tackle their
problems.

In India, community groups have been set up in villages and slums to tackle
specific problems of poor women through mutual support. They are known as
self-help groups .A typical Indian self help group consists of 10-20 poor
women from similar socio-economic backgrounds who meet once a month to
pool savings and discuss issues of mutual importance. One of the key
objectives of self help groups is to provide financial access to entrepreneurial
women through a mechanism in which women cross guarantee each others
debts.
The self help groups have their origin in the Self Help Affinity Groups
facilitated by the Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency (MYRADA)
that were adapted by the National Bank of Agricultural and Rural
Development (NABARD) for lending by commercial banks. The adapted
version, which underwent modifications to suit the needs of formal financial
laws, started in 1992 as a pilot project and was soon upgraded to a regular
banking programme .

Moreover, self help groups are also an instrument for the empowerment of
poor and marginalized sectors. They have proved to be an effective
instrument for changing oppressive relationships in the home (gender- and
tradition-related) and in society. This is especially true for those relationships
arising from caste, class and political power, which have made it difficult for
poor people to build a sustainable base for their livelihoods and to grow
holistically.

It needs great emotional intensity to break through age old barriers .This can
possible only through groups who share the same emotional values and are
driven by strong impulses of mutual goals. One of the primary objectives is
of course to avail loans which the women access by cross guaranteeing each
others liability. These loans are part of a financial philosophy called
microfinance. Members take loans for a variety of reasons: to buy medicine,
start a business, purchase animals, pay school fees, buy clothing, buy food
during the lean season, and invest in agriculture.

Women view the cooperative as their window to the outside world and as a
place where they can discuss their problems with each other, indicating that
the groups have had a profound impact on many women. The members
consider the unity and solidarity among the women in the group to be one of
the most important benefits of membership. Women have become more self-
confident in their activities. Previously, when government officials or the
bankers interacted with the village women in the absence of their husbands,
they generally responded with statements like:"I don't know", "My husband
has gone out", "What can I say", "Let him come" or "He only knows".

The self help groups are seen as entry point for many other social activities-
school committees to watershed councils .As they mature, the groups spark
and spearhead meaningful and enduring changes by addressing community
issues such as the abuse of women the dowry system, alcohol, educational
quality, inadequate infrastructure, etc.

The self help groups are the biggest generators of social capital in rural
India .Best practitioners in communities become community professionals
(CPs) and catalysts for mobilization, health, literacy financial management,
agriculture, leadership livestock, and more. The vast majority of women
leaders in Panchayat Raj Institutions have come from self help groups and
most successful sarpanches have had their grooming in these collectives. It
is not that women are purer than men or immune to the pull of greed. .But
there is almost a certainty that women will channel money into solving more
fundamental issues.

According to a Harvard Business Review study, women in emerging markets

reinvest 90% of their earning into human resources their families
education, health and nutrition compared to only 30 to 40% of earnings
by men

There are still millions of self help groups wedded to the original mission and creed.
Through them, women are transforming their own lives and that of their
communities. The sisterhood is so close knit and persuasive and sorority so intense
that women have begun to think of themselves in a different way. Beginning in the
benign area of health, the women slowly gained confidence and moved on to other
social areas.
When I first initiated this loan programme in Cjharurkhati village in
Chandrapur district as a banker almost two and half decades back, I
remember there was a woman by name Nirmala Wansnghe who started out
with a mud hut. When I came back after six years on a personal holiday, she
had a three-room house with a cement floor, and the goats were stabled in
the hut in which she had stayed before. When her group of women first came
for loans, they sat hunched, looking down into their laps. They would take
the small pile of pastel and white notes they got as part of a loan and fold it
into a hairpin behind their ears. They were looking so frightened because,
they said, they were afraid they couldnt pay it back. One of them was so
dazed that she wanted to know the name of the person who had
recommended her for the loan. Some of them even suggested taking only a
part of the loan. For the remaining they said they would consult their
husbands and then come back.

In Warora town in Centra lInida Bebibai Kotrange was abandoned by her

husband for no fault of her. Life seemed to have drawn a curtain on her life.
The odds were badly stacked against her. The Bank's timely assistance
regenerated her skills and her fingers have been honed by training to
produce beautiful garments. She now exudes a quiet confidence as she
presides at group meetings. There was a lime when she had retreated into
depression, after the sudden disappearance of her husband. "I had to lower
my eyes, seek refuge in its cocoon. I felt suffocated". It was the self help
groups which helped her emerge from the catatonic trance.

Granted, there are problems: a husband confiscates the cash and uses it to
buy a bottle of homebrew, a woman buys a goat that then dies, a borrower
uses a loan not to invest but to pay for a doctors visit for a child, and so on.
In those cases, the borrowers family is indeed worse off, but I think those
are unusual. Socially responsible finance, delivered responsibly, enables poor
women to accomplish a number of useful purposes for her family.
Social innovation is taking place at multiple levels. But as with most
trumpeted development initiatives the present programmes are also
struggling to turn rhetoric into tangible success. One inspiring step has a
tendency to raise the sense of possibility in others say, the youth who
dream of being active change agents. A lot of good programs got their start
when one individual looked at a familiar landscape in a fresh way. But
several of these programmes are difficult to scale up. We know what to do if
we just can summon the political will.
(Moin Qazi is the author of the bestselling book, Village Diary of a Heretic
Banker .He has worked in the development finance sector for almost four
decades .He can be reached at moinqazi123@gmail.com)