Poor
Women and Local Governance
In
2000, SEWA undertook its first livelihood-related work in
Degam, targeting the village’s salt farmers. Sixty
to seventy percent of the inhabitants of Degam earn their
livelihood from salt farming. The life of a salt farmer
is an arduous one. For eight months of the year, long hours
are spent under the merciless desert sun, tending to the
salt pans. A loan of Rs. 4 – 4.5 lakhs is needed to
cover work and living expenses during these months, especially
the diesel fuel needed to power the pumps that extract brine
from wells to fill the pans. These loans more often than
not come with exorbitant interests rates, which eat into
the earnings of the salt farmers. To make matters worse,
salt farmers are generally caught in exploitive relationships
with traders and middlemen, who underpay them for their
product.
The
goal of SEWA’s salt farming intervention in Degam was
to end the exploitation of the salt farmers and increase their
ability to earn a stable income. Five salt farmers were identified
from existing savings groups and were asked about switching
from the production of edible to industrial salt. The farmers,
however, were skeptical about the merits of producing industrial
salt and therefore reluctant to switch. SEWA spent much time
convincing them that it was both feasible and profitable to
produce industrial salt. Utilizing an existing government
programme, SEWA connected the salt farmers with loans on installment
for expenses and a revolving credit fund to invest in new
equipment. Practical, on-the-job technical trainings were
provided by CSMRI, a government salt research institute, to
increase the quality and competitiveness of the salt produced.
A quality testing laboratory was set up by SEWA to ensure
the quality of the salt produced, and determine the selling
price. The salt was then sold by SEWA’s marketing organization,
SEWA Gram Mahila Haat. The income received was then transferred
back to the salt farmers, after loans and other expenses were
deducted
As
a result of SEWA’s activities in Degam, membership increased
dramatically, to over 600 members. This membership, along
with the frequency of natural disasters in the district, the
severity of earthquake-related damage in the village and the
high number of families that were identified as living Below-the-Poverty-Line,
qualified Degam as a project village in the Jeevika Livelihood
Security Project for Earthquake Affected Rural Households
in Gujarat. In November 2002, the project was launched through
a gram sabha, in which the philosophy, components and goals
of Jeevika were explained. Another gram sabha was called to
explain the formation of the Village Development Committee
(VDC). The roles, responsibilities and composition of the
VDC were covered in depth. The need to make the committee
as inclusive as possible was emphasized, with all castes,
livelihoods, genders and the poorest of the poor represented.
SEWA fieldworkers also ensured that members from both the
panchayat and talati were present at the meeting, so that
they were informed and participated in the selection process.
At the end of the meeting, seven women and four men were elected
by the villagers to form the VDC.
The initial meetings of the VDC were plagued by problems.
Turn out for the meetings were low. The poorer members of
the committee were not able to attend. Every minute of every
day was spent working to ensure that they met the basic needs
of their families, and they could not afford to sacrifice
any time away from their livelihoods. SEWA addressed this
problem by providing the poorer members of the VDC with two
and a half kilograms of food grains per meeting, replacing
whatever losses they had incurred by attending, and thereby
insuring their participation in the VDC. But even once attendance
had improved, SEWA found that the meetings were dominated
by the male members. The men argued that the Jeevika project
was different from other SEWA projects, and that women did
not have adequate knowledge of the type of activities that
were to be implemented under Jeevika. Women were therefore
not capable of leading Jeevika. SEWA fieldworkers disagreed,
and had to actively engaging the female members of the VDC
during meetings.
|
