Meeting the Sarpanch in Setrawa
Ms. Corinne Rose and Ms. Adriana C. Contreras

Sambhali is considering a new scheme in Setrawa in helping local women set-up a micro-credit scheme. Firstly we needed to do some research and obtain a profile of the people in the village. To do this we needed to ask questions of the Sarpanch (the head of the village) and also to give questionnaires to the villagers to get individual responses.

So we needed to find the Sarpanch in the village. She was an older lady from the Dalit community and we did our best to find the house, but in the end needed to enlist the help of Rehka who was the previous teacher at Sambhali and had recently got married and was back in a visit to her family.

The sarpanch arrived on time at 2pm and got a little agitated while we were waiting for Madhu to arrive and so kept everybody happy with chai, papaya and packets of biscuits. Madhur arrived 15 minutes later, by which time the sarpanch’s son had also arrived and so we were able to start asking the questions we had already prepared. Both the sarpanch and her son were very vociferous with their answers and seemed to have all the information on the population distribution in Setrawa, how many women worked in the community and all questions related to health and education facilities in Setrawa.

The answers to the questions areas follows:

Name of Sarpanch: Akhla Devi

Population of Setrawa and surrounding hamlets – 6000 people

Number of houses in Setrawa – 1500 families

Caste combination –
Brahmins: 200 - 300
priests, taking care of weddings, death, and some businessmen

Ksatryas: Rajputs 500
some businesses

Vashyas:
100 Jains - shopkeepers
20 goldmakers
Sudras: 450
made up of 4-5 communities which are shoe makers, tailors, barbers, farming, cows and labourers to build houses.

Medical facilties available:
One hospital, which has 1 doctor, 3 nurses and an auxillary nurse; they are in need of a female doctor. There are a lot of private doctors which have set up practices, but these have had no proper training and are just nurses really.

Village water supply:
There are no good water facilities – there are 3 wells which have sweet water and one pond, far from the village centre, which does not have good water.

There are a lot of hand pumps – but after a few years the water gets dirty as they are not changing the pipes.

Meeting with the women of the Setrawa village about the Micro Finance Scheme - April 2009

One day over coffee, Ms. Jacqueline de Chollet (ma’am), and I were discussing about the NGO work in Jodhpur and other ways that ma’am could help us with ideas and advice or some way we could work together on something. I didn’t think it would all happen so fast, that ma’am would have a good proposal for us for starting a micro credit scheme that the Sambhali Trust could run having a partnership with Global Foundation for Humanity UK/USA. We decided that collaboration identity will be called Sheerni (Lioness).

We are very proud that we were chosen by ma’am for this purpose besides so many big NGO’s in Jodhpur, and without wasting time I took the information papers on the If’s and But’s about the micro credit scheme, went through it carefully, understood it, shared it with Corinne and the team and thought, why not giving it a try and then we will see what happens.

I went to Setrawa and conducted a meeting at 10 am. We were there almost on time and waited; it was about 11.30 am, nobody turned up except the Sambhali participants. I was worried that maybe the women of Setrawa are not interested in a project like this; this is a challenge for me and I know, if this project is taken seriously by the women of the village, it can make wonders in their underprivileged lives.

I know that the Sambhali Trust can do it. So that as many people as possible could listen to this project that I have brought into the village, I decided to hold the venue at Setrawa Village communal hall. This place is a big hall situated amongst the temples surrounded by cows and goats at the centre of the village. Slowly at around 12.30 pm ladies started to gather and slowly the word went around, and at about 12.45 pm there were about 81 women, all dressed in beautiful saris with veils and older women holding sticks and some with broken old eye glasses. Everybody kept quiet and was interested in listening to what we had to offer. For some women it was for the first time they came into the village centre in day light and that they were surprised to see the communal hall of the village from inside for the first time. Here, for the first time women were able to meet about improving their lives, where usually men sit and decide for making the change in the lives of their families while drinking alcohol, opium teas and smoking.

Bank in Setrawa

I got the proposal translated in Hindi and requested Corinne to make a shorter version from it and get it translated. I could see some strong positioned men outside the communal hall walking in their dhotis and turbans; they were curious to know what was going on. Through the windows of the hall I could peep that there were ears listening to the conversation very carefully, children were sent to listen to what we were discussing and then to report to the men standing outside waiting for the women to come out. After the conversation ladies came up with some super thoughts.

A few ladies were not ready to form groups; they were interested in working with the women of the family or as individuals. Some women didn’t get along with others or the others didn’t like them very much, they came and asked if they could also join. I said it was for all. They were very happy to hear about the micro credit scheme and liked the fact that they were given time to establish their business before paying back the interest and the credit.

Slowly ladies collected courage and through our local teacher in Setrawa made their way to where I was sitting with them on the floor. I refused sitting on the chairs brought from the neighbour’s house living next door to the communal hall.

Most of them wanted to do sewing, they needed special instructors and wanted to start home-based clothes stitching business. But they will need work. One lady said she wouldn’t mind a cow.

A few ladies said they will make food like mungodiya, papad, kheechiya, rabodiya - these are kind of snacks and curry pasta, very famous in western Rajasthan. People here make things like this so that they can preserve them for the dry, harsh summer months. Some of the ladies wanted to start little stores who keeps goods related to women and girls (fancy stores), like rubber bands, mascaras, bangles, hair pins, safety pins etc. Therefore I promised to them that I will try my best to contact shops in Jodhpur to help these women get work for stitching and making such items that can be sold and consumed by the population.

They will need proper guidance and probably one person who can come to Jodhpur quite often to help for the first few months buying raw materials, selling items done by the women etc. This person can also keep a track over the work women are doing and their accounts .

We can set up accounts for these women in the co-operative bank in Setrawa village.

The men didn’t seem to be happy with the interest women were showing in this project. One of the men came and said he could also write his wife’s name and collect credit and use it for making business. I made it very clear in my speech that it is only for women and shall be run by women in the village for their own honour and for respect they will get for having money in their own family, where they have to beg for a few coins.

I asked Usha, our local teacher, to also read the pages very carefully and put in the local dialect for women to understand better.

Later some women came up discussing their private family issues with me; some young widows had terrible lives and shared their thoughts with me and explained, their life without their husband is tough and hard to live; they even got their young 12 - 13 year young daughters married to get rid of the expense and the burden they said.

Over all it was a great response, the women are very happy to know something like this exists, where they can be the boss of their own work and identity. We left Setrawa around 2.00pm, happy and satisfied from the visit and the meeting.

After all, all I can only do is to try, step by step!
Govind Rathore


Research of our volunteers Ms. Corinne Rose and Ms. Adriana C. Contreras:
Meeting the Sarpanch

Trip to Madurai, meeting with Antenna Trust:
Madurai September 2009

Usha and Rekha - Since Rekha, our previous local teacher in Setrawa, got married, her sister Usha is our new teacher at the school.