Women Empowerment: Success’ Criteria Is Set Now
Nitya, 37-year-old, bright-eyed with wide grins, welcomed us at Srinivasan Services Trust’s (SST) banana fibre unit in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu. Her happiness proved that she cherished her solitude by earning for herself. She made a wise decision to be back in the village and trained herself.
The Self-Help Group (SHG) centre has trained more than 450 women, who are earning from Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000 per month. “I earn Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000 per month by creating baskets and more products from banana fibre. Earlier, it was difficult to earn even Rs 1,000 in a month, but now we can earn from Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 depending on how many baskets we can prepare in a month,” said Nitya.
In Padavedu, most of the people are landless and some have an average landholding of one or two acres for agriculture, hence, the main source of livelihood depends on the daily wage for labour work. Most of the farmers cultivate bananas only. To create an income from the waste, in 2002, SST founded banana fibre handicrafts units with a view of giving an income to the women SHG members.
“The initiative is helpful for us as it is difficult to dispose of banana waste after harvest, which has now become a wealth to us”, said one of the farmers in Padavedu village.
At Maruthuvampadi village, Kamakshi was abandoned by her husband, she joined 50 other women of the SHG to raise her two children independently.
It started with a few women, but now SST’s 5,300 SHGs count nearly 65,000 women as members, who have generated over Rs 100 crores in income in the form of frugality.
By providing grants and arranging low-cost loans, SST encourages women to run their own businesses, which include stitching, honey filtering, horticulture, FMCG, banana fibre products, turmeric production, schools for children, and an e-commerce platform, truelycottage.
Swaran Singh, IAS (Retired), the Chairman of the SST, the social arm of the TVS Motor Company, said, “They have their bank accounts which was a dream for them. Today, they go to banks and manage accounts. Truelycottage, an e-commerce site has been set up to make them more empowered by giving them all the rights and profits of the products.” The main objective is to make these private businesses self-sustaining. Regular visits and meetings are held to see whether they need any further help to make it profitable. “We provide them all the basic substance including the logo of the brand, websites, brochure, grants (if needed) etc. They just need to manufacture and sell products,” added Singh. Over the years, SST’s programmes have been amongst the renowned ones with more funds from the state government being granted to them.
How it has started
Once Venu Srinivasan, Chairman of TVS Motor and Sundaram-Clayton group, visited Padavedu. When he looked around, he found many depressed faces. Then he decided to pave the way to raise their standard of living. That’s how it has started.
Desilting and horticulture
Due to global warming, climate change and extreme weather conditions have played a part in drought and floods in many places. Chennai’s facing the same, however, people found a way through desilting (the removal of silt from a body of water) water bodies in villages. Subramanium, 72, a farmer from Pudur village was able to cultivate only one crop a year. He used to cultivate paddy and some others would cultivate vegetables, based on the water availability. In the villages, the main source of water was wells and borewells. In 2018, SST renovated the inlet and outlet channels and even desilted Pudur and Thamarai tanks. By desilting the tank, farmers of the Pudur villages got fertile soil from the tank and used it for crop cultivation. Today they can cultivate around three crop cycles every year. Even during summers, they have enough water to cultivate paddy. A total of Rs 4.40 lakhs including the community contribution of Rs 1.76 lakhs were spent on de-silting of the Pudur tank.
In 2002, when SST approached the farmers for the horticultural plantation under the watershed project, all of them were hesitant. Settu and Duraiswamy from Ananthapuram village were the first ones to show interest. “We used to do groundnut cultivation and only had a single crop cycle every year”, said the farmers of Ananthapuram village.
“In 2003, SST provided us with Indian gooseberry (Nelli), mango and Sapodilla (sapota) saplings. From the fourth year onwards, the yield was harvestable, and our annual income increased. SST even worked with the Forest Department and created a percolation pond, which helps in summer as well”, said Settu and Duraiswamy from Ananthapuram village. Such initiatives in the form of corporate social responsibility, CSR, have helped agricultural labourers and their womenfolk to eke out a good livelihood within the district only.
