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The Poor Woman Wants Handup Not A Handout

By Moin Qazi

17 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

The first loan that I sanctioned to a village woman gave me a unique experience. Women entrepreneurs will shy away from loans, having personally witnessed the shame women in their village suffered at the hands of moneylenders. Villagers would dissuade me, saying a woman would hand the money over to her husband who would fritter it away. Even our staff said, “Let us forget about this project because we cannot compel them if their husbands have reservations. If they are not willing, why are you forcing them to avail these loans?”

I emphasized to my staff that when these women say no, it is not their own voice. It is the voice of their history, the way they were treated, that took away all their confidence. One day, after we coax off the crust of fear that grew around them, one or two of them take a loan, and others feel encouraged to follow suit. Nevertheless, it took me six years to bring about that increase in awareness and ambition.

There is an internal wrestling in the mind of the borrower. She quakes, fumbles and sleeps poorly, fretting. She agrees with great hesitation. She spends a sleepless night, tossing and turning, debating whether she should go through with it. One nagging thought keeps arising: “What will become of my parents and family if I cannot repay the loan? My mother has toiled so hard to guard her reputation.” The woman has created problems for the family already, just by being a girl, being a woman. She doesn’t want to create more by borrowing what she cannot repay. In the morning, her friends come over and encourage her because they have all decided to go through with it, and if she drops out, everything collapses. “Don’t worry, we all will support each other; we have to take a chance, otherwise our fate will never change,” counsels a fellow member.

Godavari Uikey was a fifty-two-year-old illiterate woman, who was a member of one of the oldest women collective in the village but since the group did not have a credit line with the bank and had a low cash base, her loan requirements could not be entertained at the group level. It was a middle size village ,called Charurkhati in northern Maharashtra. Because of drought, Godavari had few remaining means of survival. Married at 18, she had three children, all daughters, and she was the sole breadwinner. She had an alcoholic husband whose habit she funded out of her wages and who beat her if she answered back. Godavari’s life consisted of cooking meals, taking care of her children and staying quiet. Always required to ask her husband’s permission to leave the house, and these requests usually denied, she described herself back then, in a breathy, weak-lunged voice, as “sad and alone”, with a body work-hunched and wiry. Her neighbours confided that she was a tear factory even on good days. While struggling to survive on her family’s meagre income, she did not think she had the authority to tell her husband to stop spending thirty percent of their earnings on liquor. Fear of poverty and respect for society kept her locked in a bad marriage, as did the prospect of losing custody of their children. The glassy stare in her eyes revealed some of the despair.

One day, Godavari’s neighbour, Vimal Dahule, told her about the programme that helped women pool their own savings—sometimes as little as Rs. 20 a month—and then provide loans to each other. Defying her husband and leaving the house without permission, Godavari and some women in her community went to learn more about the programme, and decided to start their own village savings and loan group. Godavari was excited about what the bank and its manager might mean for them, but her husband tried to dispel what he considered her silly notions that any bank would actually help them.“I don’t want to have anything to do with the bank,” he said at first, with a dismissive toss of his hands to his wife who he felt was being taken for a ride by a charlatan banker.

When I first proffered the loan, Godavari stuttered with fright and her honest face crumpled in despair. Clenching and unclenching her fists, she drank a full glass of water from a battered aluminium jug. I assured her that if she made a serious attempt at properly investing the loan and yet failed in generating surplus, we would not divest her of her bare belongings in the way of a moneylender. Godavari scratched her head, did quick mental math and decided to give the loan a try. There was nothing to lose. When I placed the envelope in her astonished hands, her eyes grew large and lambent, and they darted at the cheque book lying on the table and then back at me. She signed the receipt in a hurried, untidy scrawl.

She screamed in delight as she saw what was inside the envelope. She trembled. Tears rolled down her cheeks. With help from us and with the combined resources of her new business partners, Godavari bought a cow for around Rs. 4,000 which continues to produce daily dividends—more than three pints of milk that she sells to the upper-caste landowners in the neighbouring village. Recently, the cow gave birth to a calf. Godavari was already engaged in dairying as a wage labour and her dream of having her own independent unit was realised.

The experience reinforced our belief: you can’t just give a woman a loan and then send her on her way—you have to accompany her as she struggles to make her way out of poverty. Godavari’s business took off quickly, and she began earning enough income to provide for her family, send her daughters to school, and pay for her husband’s medical bills. She gained some of the respect she deserved from her husband, who allowed her more freedom and even began to help her with her business ventures.

Godavari is now seen by her community as a ‘husband-tamer’ and a smart businesswoman. Since joining the programme, Godavari has not only become an inspiration for other women in her community, but she serves as a prime example of how economic security can provide the right kind of aid for women and their children and even have a positive effect on marriages.

Though illiterate, her skills at financial arithmetic are phenomenal. She and the thirty other women of the village Self Help Group even managed to chase the local liquor shop out of their village. They walk about proudly in their uniforms—identical saris that they bought out of the money they pooled from their precious savings. Contrast them with their appearance just a few years ago—a group in discoloured rags. She remembers standing for hours at the local water pump—which she could not touch—waiting for a higher caste woman to take pity on her and fill her bucket. She was so poor, she washed her hair with mud and owned a single sari. When she laundered it, she had to stay in the river until it dried. She herself says, “When I started, I had no support from anyone, no education, no money. I was like a stone with no soul. When I joined the women collective, it gave me shape, life. I learned courage and boldness. I became a human being.” Now an infectious smile seemed to have dug a permanent home in her face.

Moin Qazi is a well known banker, author and Islamic researcher .He holds doctorates in Economics and English. He was Visiting Fellow at the University of Manchester. He has authored several books on religion, rural finance, culture and handicrafts. He is author of the bestselling book Village Diary of a Development Banker. He is also a recipient of UNESCO World Politics Essay Gold Medal and Rotary International’s Vocational Excellence Award. He is based in Nagpur and can be reached at [email protected]




 

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