The Hindu : Karnataka News : From workers to owners

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 16, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka

From workers to owners

Rishikesh Bahadur Desai

`Our hands are full. No member of the 11 SHGs works in the fields anymore.'

Empowerment: Women working at a neem crushing unit.

BIDAR: If someone had told Shalubai Narayanappa last year that she would be running a factory and employing people, she would have laughed at it. A landless agricultural labourer from Bandenawaz Wadi, a tribal hamlet, she used to walk to Basavakalyan, six km away, every day to find work in the sugarcane fields of rich farmers. Only half the Rs. 35 Shalubai earned every day was given to her and the other half held back as interest on a loan she had taken when her son was unwell. Weary after the day's work she would climb the hillock that leads to her village, returning home only to find that there isn't enough flour to make rotis for people at home.

But that was more than a year ago. Shalubai is now part of the Saraswati Self-Help Group that crushes neem seeds to make "Jeevamrutha," a fertilizer-pesticide. The demand for the product is so high that farmers book it months in advance. The self-help group provides direct and indirect employment to hundreds of women who collect neem seeds, clean and dry them, and fill the paste in bags and stitch them. The SHG members, who have been trained in the production of the fertilizer, now run the factory by themselves.

Good demand

"Our hands are full. No member of the 11 SHGs works in the fields anymore. We have paid back our loans and stopped taking loans from moneylenders," Shalubai explains. Hasmathbi Quasimsab, a member of the group, is all smiles when she says they had to reject orders this year as they had sold all their produce within a month.

Shanamma Revanasidda, a septuagenarian and the oldest member of the group, says the group is now thinking of expanding operations and is planning to install a toor dal making unit this year. "We save on the cost of labour as we do most of the work ourselves. Since we can make toor dal at a cheaper rate, we hope to sell it at a lower rate than the mills," she said.

NABARD help

This change in the lives of the poor women has been aided by the NABARD and Prawarda, a Basavakalyan-based non-governmental organisation. "Inspired by a SHG-run neem unit, promoted by the Manjra Cooperative Bank at Zaheerabad near Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, I suggested to a few NGOs that we should do something similar in our district. And Prawarda took the lead," says H.N. Ranganatha Rao, Assistant General Manager, NABARD.

The convenor of Prawarda, Basavaraj K.H., said that after the members of the NGO visited the unit in Andhra Pradesh, they felt confident that SHGs in the district too could run similar units. "We sent the members of the Saraswati SHG to Zaheerabad for training, helped them obtain a Rs. 1.25-lakh loan and procure a neem crusher. Since most of them were illiterate, we made them appoint a person who would keep accounts and interact with buyers.

The group has already repaid half the loan amount and is aiming at making profits this year."

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