Thanks to illiterate women in rural India, this ‘Bombay girl’, armed with an M.A., completed her education and acquired some wisdom
She displayed just a slight trace of remorse at being far from Bombay, the mega-city where she was born, brought up and educated; but she was thrilled by the thought of being invited to the Taj Mahal Hotel and felicitated by the Rotary Club of Bombay.
That her child-like glee was genuine and not fake became clear as she revealed that her education (an M.A. from Bombay University) had just not prepared her to face the vicissitudes of life. In actual fact, she completed her education and acquired wisdom from the largely illiterate women whom she met in rural India.
Mrs. Chetna Gala Sinha, who was presented with the Anita Parikh Award for the Empowerment of Women by PP Nalin Parikh and President Nandan Damani at the last meeting, in the course of her talk confessed that her pride at being a “Bombay girl” was blown to bits when she became a farmer like her husband in rural Satara.
Driven by idealism (she was associated with the JP movement of the 1970s), she went with rosy dreams of changing the rural landscape and leading the poor away from darkness. Her dreams died very young.
When the couple took its first harvest of onions (200 quintals) to the market at Kolhapur, she went in the truck that had been hired; she made plans of all that she would do with the money that the onions would fetch.
A bitter awakening awaited herin the Kolhapur agricultural market. The best price for the onionswas 20 paise per kg. She was dumbstruck and cried on the way back, realising that the money received was enough only to pay the rent for the truck.
Most of the farmers in the village were in a similar situation, their woes
multiplied by the demands of shop-owners who had given them seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and other inputs on credit. Now that the farmers had sold their produce, they wanted their money.
The farmers parted with whatever they had earned and were told that they would not be given any further credit facilities. Even the banks turned them away.
Mrs. Sinha said she was shocked by this and recalled her childhood when banks used to aggressively offer loans to her father, who was a Kutchi businessman.
The experience forced her to think of starting a financial institution for the poor. That entailed several lessons in red-tape, entrenched bureaucracy, local politicians’ egos and other hazards.
When the proposal for starting a co-operative bank was prepared, all the promoters were women and almost all of them appended their thumb impressions because they were not literate. The project proposal was submitted to the Commissioner’s office in the Co-operative Department and to the Reserve Bank of India.
The application was rejected on the ground that a majority of the members were illiterate.
“I sat in an ST bus and cried when I went back. We had worked for two years and yet we could not get the licence. But when I told the women about it, they didn’t cry. They said, ‘So what? We will try again. We will learn to read and write and will give the application again’.
“I realised then that I am not used to being denied. But they, the village women, face denial everyday, so they are ready for it. We applied again.”
This time, said Mrs. Sinha, the group drew up a strategy. Aware that the officers concerned were also quite sensitive, a group of 15 women descended on Bombay. The security guard would not allow them in, but they convinced him that they had an appointment.
Once inside, they told the officers that they could calculate the interest on any given principal amount and that they could do it as quickly as the other officers in the room provided they did not use calculators.
To cut a long story short, the licence to start the co-operative bank was received in 1997 and the Manndeshi Mahila Bank Ltd. was inaugurated. But another “lesson” was in store as soon as the bank opened its doors.
Mrs. Sinha expected women to queue up for loans. But not a single woman turned up. Later, she learnt that the women were unsure about making repayments if they took loans. For, they had no salary or fixed in-come. They were afraid that if they defaulted in paying monthly instalments, then the bank would confiscate their goods, their property and so on.
And so it was decided that instead of waiting for customers, it would be better if the bank went out to its customers.
“Therefore, Manndeshi does doorstep banking. We have a network of agents who move around in the area, reach the women wherever they are working or doing business and the women save small amounts like Rs. 5 or Rs. 10 every day. Some even save just Re. 1 per day.”
Mrs. Sinha, who acknowledged the presence of Ms Malini Thadani of HSBC in the audience, said that HSBC was assisting the bank in designing electronic passbooks for its customers. The need for this had arisen because of another typical example of chauvinism.
It was noted that most women were not taking their passbooks home, preferring to keep them in the bank. The reason was not difficult to fathom. The women were afraid that if their husbands saw the passbooks, they would start demanding money.
“People in rural India know exactly what they want. Since I am from Bombay, it does not mean thatI (am smarter and that I) should be advising them. They know what they want and they also know whatthey do not want.”
A woman named Nakusa approached the bank for a loan to repay a moneylender. Intrigued by the name, she asked her husband what it meant; he told her that it could be that the woman was an “unwanted” third or fourth daughter of her parents.
It turned out that Nakusa was indeed the fifth daughter of her parents. It had not mattered to them that she would have to spend the rest of her life being called “unwanted”.
From begging on the roads as a child, Nakusa was now the proud owner of property in her own name. Despite a life full of “negatives”, the woman had nursed certain aspirations and made them come true.
Another case was that of a woman who reared buffaloes and sold milk for a living. She had taken a loan from the bank and had repaid it. At the time of repayment, she expressed a desire to do something different.
She was given information about several activities and chose to make paper cups. She worked hard and set up a little factory. Soon, she started doing well and in 2005 she was chosen to receive the Exemplary Woman Award by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Mrs. Sinha said this woman, with little higher education, first travelled to Bombay and then flew by air to Delhi where she received the award from the Prime Minister. When she returned to the village, many women stepped forward to say that they also wanted to start a small business.
“And thus was born the Manndeshi Udyogini business school. I purposely don’t call it a vocational training school because the women who take training really start their business. It was inaugurated by Ms Naina Lal Kidwai and it is sponsored by HSBC.”
One day, a young girl turned up at this school saying that she had passed the Seventh grade and wanted to work for two months during her vacations. Since there was no high school in the village, she would have to trek a long distance to another village to attend class. If she worked for two months, she would earn some money and buy a bicycle so that she could go to the neighbouring village and study in the Eighth grade.
“She worked for two months and Manndeshi Bank gave her a bicycle. I then realised that the girl knew where she wanted to go and also how to get a bicycle. From that day, we decided that Manndeshi Bank will provide bicycles for girls to go to school.
“Today, more than 3,700 girls have received bicycles. The girlsaspire so much; they look forward to higher education… so Manndeshi Udyogini does such programmes. It’s a learning experience for us; it teaches us how to empower women.
“These women are not in a poor or vulnerable situation. They are very clear; they know what they want – they want to own property and they want to own households.”
Mrs. Sinha said one of the self-help groups in a nearby village decided to have all property in the women’s names. Once they received the backing of the village, the Manndeshi Bank decided that women from that village would not have to pay any interest if they availed of loans because they were the owners of households.
Interestingly, in that year (when the women got household property in their names), that particular village paid the highest property taxes!
Summing up her talk, Mrs. Sinha said she sometimes wondered whether the activities she had described were placing additional responsibilities on women and doubling their workload. Ideally, it was better if men shared the work.
“We give many awards – to men who give education to their daughters and to men who share property with their wives.
“When working with women wefind them ready to come forward and work; as for men, they want tobe felicitated and appreciated. That’s the difference,” she concluded.
Answering questions, Mrs. Sinha said that people in rural India were empowering themselves without government programmes and subsidies and were changing their lives with the help of technology.
When a member of a nomadic tribe approached the bank for a loan to buy a cellphone, the branch manager thought that she wanted it for her husband or for her son. But she said that she reared sheep and goats and that she would migrate to distant places for about four months.
During that time, she would leave her children with her in-laws. A cellphone would enable her to stay in touch with her children and inquire about their well being. That was a revealing experience for the bank. She also suggested that it was time the business school started a class on how to use a cellphone.
“Even Nokia would not have thought how women in rural India were using technology to empower themselves.”
Sitaram Shah asked about the reactions and the behaviour of men towards empowered women.
Mrs. Sinha said that in rural India there were different hierarchies such as caste which had not gone away. Even within families, women had a different position.
On the day before the inauguration of the bank, the local political leaders who were not happy with the idea of a women’s co-operative bank kept mumbling that the women had gone crazy. To humiliate them, they gave some money to a local and told him to drink and create a scene.
That man drank and kept screaming all evening on the roads,against Manndeshi and against women. “It was a very shrewd wayof trying to reduce the confidence of women.”
It was also true that the male members in a family felt uncomfortable when the women took leadership positions and had their own money. She advised all such women to have patience and to face the situation; over time, the men would change their attitudes.
“But then even the men in rural India are not getting anything…apart from the status of being males. The life of men in rural India is also quite bad. There is no work, there are no jobs; agriculture is not productive, it’s not profitable.
“Having control on finance makes things different for women. They are recognised in the family because they are recognised outside by Manndeshi Bank. Some of our women are invited to give talks, some get awards… if they get recognition in society, then their family also respects them.
"Our strategy is that they should be respected in public, they should get an opportunity of leadership (not political, but otherwise), then their family respects them," Mrs. Sinha added.