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Tamil Nadu
Hard hit: Quarry workers without work in Pudukottai; S. Sheela, office-goer, employed on consolidated pay-scale.
Working women, particularly those from lower income and middle-income groups, seem to bear the brunt of the inflationary trend. Left with the responsibility of supplementing their family income, these women find it too hard to make both ends meet. The category of the lower income women groups include the members of self-help groups and those employed on consolidated pay struct ure in private companies or even government departments. The lower-income group women have taken loans from private money-lenders to manage their domestic budget. A number of stone quarry-workers, for instance, at Kunnavayal near Pudukottai town are the worst suffers of the rising prices. “We are not able to meet our daily needs. The price of even a washing soap has gone up,” says S. Jyothi (38) Animator of the Cauvery Self-Help Group, which has taken on lease one of the stone-quarries in the area. The lapse of the five-year lease period of their quarry in April has added to their woes. “We have taken loan of Rs. 5,000 out of the savings of our group and we are pinning our hope on the renewal of the quarry to repay our loan,” she says. Most workers said that they had taken loans from private money-lenders. “For every Rs.1,000, the interest rate is Rs.25. The repayment schedule is Rs.100 a week,” says Ms. Jyothi. For her the price rise could not have come at a worse time. She has to meet the expenses for admission of her son to the first year undergraduate course at H.H. The Rajah’s College in Pudukottai. “I have to meet an additional expenditure of Rs.3,000 towards my son’s higher education,” she says explaining the similar compelling grounds for other members of her group to take loans from private money-lenders. The women workers have been idling for the past two months, she says. Many of them find it difficult to even have a square meal a day. An office-goer, S. Sheela, employed on consolidated pay basis at the District Supply and Marketing Society here, says that it has been a ‘big struggle’ for her for the past several months to manage her essential expenses. She says that her husband’s monthly profit from his two-wheeler spare-parts shop was not assured. “Apart from rent, medical expenses often cut into my monthly budget,” she says. She points out that immediate steps should be taken to check the rise in prices of essential commodities. She expresses concern over the sudden and steep rise in the prices of the LPG. “Having been used to a facility in the form of LPG cylinders, we cannot switch over to the kerosene stoves,” she says. She confesses that she could not bring about any economy in her budget. Apart from foreseen expenditure such as school fees, it is the unforeseen emergency that sends her family budget in disarray. Her only solace is that she has been getting some financial support from her relatives, lest she should have been financially doomed. Her consolidated pay from the Society for the past 13 years has been just sufficient to meet her monthly rent and other incidental expenditure.
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