The story for Empowering the Women though Self Help movement

I am Shri. Subrata Sarkar- a development professional belongs to a tiny town of West Bengal State of India. I am in the field of third sector development for last 31years, and was instrumental in empowering the Women and marginalized section of community since last 22 years by enabling them, guiding them and  encouraging them to stand on their own feet based on the principle of “Self Help is the best Help, United we stand,divided we fall” .My niche was to transform the “ immense potential in the positive action” for the invisible labor force –ie, Women. That’s why was took the leadership in evolving the “ self reliance safety nets” for this hapless poor,  based on their associative strength, local leadership and local resources with special focus to Women, irrespective of the type of settlements, areas ie, urban slums, pavement,  illegal settlement, remote inaccessible  villages/regions of the country, complex emergency situation etc while worked with Refugees from Bangladesh, Internally  Displacement population of  the North Eastern States of India (due to fratricidal ethnic conflicts), Natural disaster hit areas of Gujarat(Earthquake at  Bhuj, Saurastra)-Western part of India, Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Karaikal of Tamilnadu,  Pudcahhry of South India due to Tsunami , the socially excluded population of Irulas/Snake charmers , dalits , Indigenous tribes –etc. 

While  working with Urban slums Self Help Groups at Kolkata( Sate capital of West Bengal, India) , during one three days  SHG training programmes , I observed that during second day of the said training program three women out of five Women participants from a urban slums of Kolkata who had attended in the first day, were absent/dropped out in the second day  and I asked the reason for their drop out. Their team leader informed me that, after returning the first days training programme those three Women SHG members were brutally beaten by their husband for attending the SHG meeting by ignoring the household /family’s core responsibilities. This incident shocked me like anything. So I advised the team leader to meet their family members, including their husbands, in laws, and try to know the reason of the torturing of their wives, daughter in laws. So after the completion of the said Training programme, they visited the house of their tortured SHG members, and tried to made their husbands, in laws understand that their daughter in law participated in the SHG training program in search of self reliance, to stand on their own feet, so that they could help their family also in improving their family income and overall status of family. After a vigorous brainstorming interaction and counseling their husbands understood the mistakes they did and apologized in front of the other SHG members for wife beating. After that, it was a dramatic change in the attitude of their husbands, and in laws, as by understanding the utility of SHGs, they themselves started motivating other male ‘s in the same and neighboring  slums in allowing their wives, and other women in participating the SHGs . The social engineering process adopted by the SHGs under my leadership and guidance ultimately became instrumental in mobilization of huge numbers of slums Women in the aegis of SHGs in search of their livelihoods. Then gradually more such SHGs were  formed, strengthened followed by imparting skill training like tailoring, nursing, embroidery , soft toys making, physiotherapy, beautician to them, and linkages were established with financial intuition to start their own business. This vivacious Self Help movement not only empowered the said Women economically but also became instrumental in improving their confidence level, negotiation skill, Group solidarity and enhances their status in the respective family and the Society. In this way I made attempts in ensuring “Voice of the Voice less” for the least, the last and the lost of the community –the invisible labor force i.e, Women and helped them to became in to a real Change Maker , as they became a ambassador of social change in improving almost all the Human Development Index like Health, education, per capita income for the SHG families   etc through their agile leadership  in the said SHG movement . So I feel happy when these Women, not only in Urban Slums, but also in the remote, isolated villages says-“We are happy now, as we are very rich in respect of our social and financial capital in a big way. Earlier we didn’t have any confidence in group approach and used to live  in isolation .  We didn’t have any idea about thrift and credit and its utility in capital accumulation, after joining SHG’s we got training on all these “ modus operandy” and evolved our group corpus in a big way – received Bank support based on our own savings/corpus for mitigating our consumption and production needs.  We were not so literate earlier , we were reluctant to sent our kids in the schools—now we became  literate through Adult literacy center, organized by SHGs in our slums, villages , and after being convinced about the importance of education, we are now sending our kids, especially girl children to the schools and they are doing well in their respective classes.  We didn’t have any toilet in our shanties, villages,  through SHG movement we got the Toilet support from the Municipality, Panchahayet based on our own contribution and adopted health sanitary and  personal hygiene  practices through WASH. Our overall knowledge level on social development has changed significantly and now we are in a position to become a real partner of our male counterpart in our local area development”.

The aforesaid reflection is not the reflection of any particular SHG or Women Groups of Urban slums of Kolkata but the overall “lessons learnt” of all the SHGs in remote villages of Kokrajhar,Dhubri, Bongaigoan( lower Assam), Tsunami affected women in coastal Tamil Nadu- Cuddalore, drought affected Purulia, urban slums of Kolkata ---- where I worked with, guided them, motivated them and empowered them towards improved , sustainable livelihoods and other socioeconomic development.  Initially .I had to face a very tough challenges and lot of impediments in mobilizing, motivating  the Women in the banner of SHGs, and lot of relentless effort ( including developing songs on SHGs in vernacular language, developed IEC material on Group dynamics, Group stability indicators, storytelling ---)  had to made during my journey for making a vibrant SHG movement  and I became successful in making the male counterparts understand  about the utility of forming WSHGs and they also got inspired after observing the agile performance of the female SHGs, as a result, the male also started to form SHG, gradually transformed in to Farmers Groups, self Employed Groups, Joint Liability Groups. Today I am very satisfied to say that under my guidance, supervision and direct nurturing, more than 5000 vibrant SHGs were formed and lion’s share of those Groups had  started their livelihood intervention with the support from Bank, Government of India’s  flagship program-NRL/UM-National Rural /Urban livelihood programme  and become instrumental as a social catalyst in their respective villages, settlements,  in the States of India ( West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Tamilnadu, Puducharry, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhyapradesh, Meghalaya----) where I had been worked under the aegis of different Organizations for last 31 years.

Now after 31 years of my development efforts, I can also reflect that’ I am the happiest person now  , to  see a paradigm shift in the life, livelihood  status of these Women , compare to their earlier days of their struggle against extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and were in the vicious cycle of poverty.

Thanks.

Subrata Sarkar

India

Date-28.10.2018