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Bihar
NBJK started its small groups support programme in the early 1990s as it realised that it was in danger of becoming a big NGO and losing contact with the day to day realities in the villages. So, it decided to grow and spread its influence and programmes by promoting new village-based groups. It has provided training and guidance and, in some cases, financial support to these new groups set up by committed people working in their own villages.
NBJK now has contact with over 200 grassroots groups in Jharkhand and Bihar and more groups are coming forward to seek their support every day. So, NBJK is planning a district and state level support structure for the small groups programme. As well as promoting new groups and identifying their capacity building needs, the network will develop an advocacy role. AVI will work with NBJK on this initiative.
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Mahila Vikas Ashram works with dalit and backward castes, its prioritiesare child labour, Lok Samitis and increasing awareness of the Panchayat (local government) system. |
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| Mahila Bal Vikas Kendra's Priorities are SHG's Lok Samitis, child labour and education. | |||
| Koshish's
priorities are its model development
area at Fatuha where it has set up information centres, human rights
and communal harmony. Koshish's founder, Rupesh, is Secretary
of NBJK's Bihar Lok Samiti |
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Gram
Nirman Kendra works with
Musahars, the most exploited of the dalits. Education for dalit girls
has been it's strength, but now they cannot get funding for the schools.
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Jharkhand
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Gramin Vikas Samiti's priorities are the environment, especially forest preservation, SHGs, health and Lok Samitis (NBJK promoted people's committees). |
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Lok
Prerna Kendra works with
tribal people, mainly running schools and women's SHGs. Lok
Prerna Kendra works with tribal people, mainly running schools and
women's SHGs. |
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| Nav Bharat Jagriti Kendra As well as supporting community groups NBJK also runs health,education, watershed, appropriate technology and training programmes in both states. | ||
Early morning activity at Sarvodaya Nagar’s handpump |
Forty
years ago, 16 landless dalit families settled on sandy riverbank land
donated to the Bhoodan Movement by a large landowner. Gradually
they cleared the land and planted guava orchards. Ramswaroop
Bhai, the founder of Lok Shakti
Shikshan Kendra (LSSK), then opened a balwari for their children
and worked with the people to get wells and pumps installed under
government programmes. The people built their own community
centre and now brick houses are being built. Ramswaroop’s work
in this village, Sarvodaya Nagar, provided the model for AVI’s support
for the community action groups’ programme in Bihar and Jharkhand.
We were also present at the first joint meeting of LSSK’s women’s
self-help group
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Mrs Putul, GNK's founder, at her centre's gate. |
Gram Nirman Kendra’s (GNK’s) centre at Manjholi is a green tree-lined oasis in miles of flat dry land, just east of Gaya. GNK works mainly with the Musahars, the lowest caste in this area. Few of them are literate and even fewer have land, so they work as agricultural labourers and men have to migrate for work. At Gereya, GNK helped people resettle by a pond away from main village. Their mud and straw houses were destroyed three times by the landowners, but they persevered. Undaunted, the labourers also successfully went on strike for equal wages for women (3.5 kgs of grain per day). At Sabari Nagar, another new Musahar settlement, GNK runs a non-formal school and has started two women’s SHGs. The SHGs’ savings have been used mainly for communal rather than personal needs. |
Traditional latha/kumba well irrigation at Gor Bigha |
At Gor Bigha near Bodh Gaya, Avidya Vimukti Santhan (AVS) has funds from and Indian Government body, CAPART, to repair a small dam and deepen a small canal to increase agricultural productivity. The village is expected to do one-quarter of the work free as its contribution. AVS has started 5 SHGs there and its school has now been taken over by the government. For International Women’s Day, over 2500 women from AVS’ SHGs came to Bodh Gaya’s Magadh University. The District Development Commissioner addressed this lively event and at the end several SHG members spoke, though many were disappointed that there was no time for their contribution. Cooks worked for nearly 20 hours to prepare puris and potatoes for them all! AVS plans to double the numbers of SHGs under its wing in the Bodh Gaya area in the next year. |
Women SHG members from Birhu village gathered on a house roof to meet the evaluator. |
Near Hazaribag at Simariya, Filman Oraon’s Lok Prerna Kendra (LPK) has been working with tribal people for many years. Much of the area where he works is now controlled by leftist groups and they restrict LPK to running schools and women’s SHGs. SHG members in the three villages we visited told us that they have poor access to health services and education. But, importantly, involvement in the SHGs has, for the first time, enabled them to move freely outside their homes to attend SHG meetings, go to the bank, markets etc. Growing tomatoes has been very profitable for some members, so the women want capital to enable more to start. LPK is now linked to a network of tribal run groups in Orissa and Jharkhand, which is being funded by Oxfam, but funding is a real problem for this experienced group working in very difficult circumstances. |
Women and children at Udaipur |
Basudev Pandit’s Gramin Vikas Samiti (GVS) works in Santhal villages near Maheshmunda in Jharkhand’s Giridih District. In these tribal villages he works with the whole community as the caste and economic divisions are much less pronounced. Basudev has persuaded these tribal women to start SHGs. After a memorable welcome to their village, the women in Udaipur told us that there was a lot of resistance from men to the idea of starting SHGs. They were suspicious that outsiders would walk off with the money. Now they are seeing some benefits so the men are quiet and more groups will be formed soon. But their children don’t go to school because they cannot afford the pencils and books. At another village, Mehror, men told us how they had started SHGs. The Santhals have land, but there is no irrigation so they are looking to GVS and the government to solve this problem. |
Nilu Mala with parents and pupils at Mow Wajidpur Dakshin school. |
The contrast between the dry fallow land of Jharkhand and the lush green of the wheat crops of the Gangetic plain near Samastipur north of the Ganges was very striking. Nilu Mala, the very enthusiastic woman Secretary of Mahila Bal Vikas Kendra (MBVK), has been linked to NBJK since mid-1999. MBVK mobilised Rs200,000 (£3000) from the local MP’s fund to repair a former school building in Mow Wajidpur Dakshin, a small market town. Now, voluntary community contributions enable MBVK to run a primary school with pupils from dalit, backward caste and Muslim children. Here too, women SHG members told us that they could only start SHGs with permission from their men. They said Nilu had to visit many of the groups 10 to 15 times before they agreed to start meeting. But now, they have 28 groups and the women say they have more independence. |
 Dohini
Devi, after her arm had been broken by her community's oppressor. |
Further north in Darbhanga District, Viswanath Mishra’s Mahila Vikas Ashram (MVA) works with people from dalit and backward castes. Our first visit was to a workless, landless nomadic tribal group who had been settled for 10 years on the banks of a lake. MVA is working with them to run a school and find land for them to live on and farm. We then joined the training session organised by NBJK for newly elected panchayat (village council) representatives as the great majority of the new councillors are unclear about their roles and responsibilities. Finally, at Mohanpur we met a Musahar (dalit) community, which is being terrorised by a local thug who has claimed the little land these people cultivated and impounds any of their goats or pigs that stray onto ‘his’ land. Women who go to reclaim their animals have been assaulted. We met Dohini Devi and Kala Devi who have a case against their oppressor in the High Court at Patna. MVA has used its support from AVI to build a beautiful circular training/meeting space. |
One of Koshish’s information centres near Fatuha. |
Koshish is based in the Bihar state capital, Patna. Its founder and leader, Rupesh, is Secretary of NBJK’s Bihar Lok Samiti and its central Patna office is a great networking space for activists from all fields. We arrived from Darbhanga straight into meetings with academics, human rights activists and journalists and some of the student artists who support Koshish, for example by producing the cards AVI has used for the last two years. The organisation works in Fatuha, just east of the city, where it has set up information centres and linked farmers with banks and the Patna dairy co-operative. Its initiative to recruit one information volunteer in each village has been taken up locally by UNICEF. Koshish uses AVI support to pay the rent on its office and expenses such as volunteers’ travel. |
Anjou, a NBJK SHG member in Hazaribag
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