Thomas Doe
Social WorkerNulla totam rem metus nunc hendrerit ex voluptatum deleniti laboris, assumenda suspendisse, maecenas malesuada morbi a voluptate massa! Hendrerit, egestas.
Nulla totam rem metus nunc hendrerit ex voluptatum deleniti laboris, assumenda suspendisse, maecenas malesuada morbi a voluptate massa! Hendrerit, egestas.
Nira Chhatria
“My dreams are simple. I just want my children to become educated, stand on their own two feet and escape a life of poverty. They should not have to experience what we did. I also want to keep farming; there is a great sense of satisfaction when people from around the village appreciate the quality of your produce.”
Tucked away in one of the remote corners of the Bongomunda block of Balangir district in Odisha, is a little village called Beherabahal. Nira Chhatria is a woman in her mid-forties who married into this village about 20 years ago. Since then, Beherabahal has been home to her. She lives here with her husband and three sons aged fifteen, eleven and nine years.
Life was a simple equation for Nira till her elder son reached school-going age. The husband-wife duo would migrate to Raipur, a village about 500 km away, to work as daily wage labourers for six months every year. For the other half of the year, they would be dependent on whatever little they could grow in their small patch of land, or the work they would find as agricultural labourers in other people’s fields. From the money they earned by migrating to Raipur and the other odd jobs they did the year round, they barely survived.
Life went on till the couple’s eldest son started going to school, and they were faced with a difficult problem to solve. If they kept migrating, their son’s education would take a serious hit, and he would grow up to become exactly like them, living in extreme poverty and continuing the vicious cycle. They were determined this was not the future that they wanted for their children. The decision to stop migrating to Raipur for work, however, came with huge economic hardship. The family was now confined to earning from the odd jobs that came their way in and around their small village.
What they were not aware of, was that their luck was about to turn around in a few years. In 2015, Trickle Up started working with ultrapoor women in the Bongomunda block; and Nira was chosen as a project participant. Soon, a Self Help Group was formed in the village and Nira became an active member of it. They named it Nari Shakti. “At that point in time, it was not easy to save even INR 10 every week. But the field staff kept encouraging us and telling us that this was all for a better future, and slowly we started to believe in them. We started keeping that money aside,” says Nira.
She was also chosen as a participant when in 2016, when Trickle Up and TATA Communications intervened through the M-Powered project. She then received a seed grant of INR 3000 and a smartphone. The smartphone came to her with the Packets of Practices (PoP), a preloaded application developed by Trickle Up. She was coached on agricultural practices and trained to use the PoP application as a part of the intervention.
From the app, she learnt how, when and the optimum amount to use organic manure for agriculture. She also learnt how to till the land for best results. She came to know details like how much distance she should keep between seeds and how to save them from pests. Naturally the quality of the produce improved drastically. Even if one plant gets infected somehow, the others don’t get infected from it because of the distance. There is a huge water crisis in their area, and people say that it will only become worse in the coming years. Nira is glad that she has learnt how to use water responsibly and has been trained to re-use the water they use for bathing and washing for the farming as well. The vegetables she now grows in her patch of land have become sellable products. She started selling them in the weekly markets of Bongomunda, Sindhikhela and sometimes even in the daily markets around her village. The quality of this organic produce was so good, that soon people started buy vegetables from her directly.
“I love ornaments. They’re so beautiful to look at! I’ve always wanted to have some of my own. They’re assets too, you know. So one of the first few things I did with the money I earned from my farming was to buy some gold! I am looking forward to getting some pretty earrings made. I also bought two goats and two cattle. This will help me expand my channels of earning and I won’t be dependent on agriculture alone,” beams Nira.
Not only is she earning way more than she used to, she has also started seeing the benefits of saving with the SHG. The savings have according to her, been a lifesaver. “We are going through a major climatic change it seems. There is very little rain and agriculture is badly affected. If it hadn’t been for the money I have been able to save, or the alternate livelihood options I have learnt like livestock rearing, we would have gone back to being poverty stricken. I haven’t been able to buy any gold this year, but my family eats well, and I can buy all the stationery and books my children need in school. I shudder to think how things would be otherwise,” she states.
The intervention also connected her to the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and she’s proud of the pukka house built under this scheme in 2017.
“My dreams are simple. I just want my children to become educated, stand on their own two feet and escape a life of poverty. They should not have to experience what we did. I also want to keep farming; there is a great sense of satisfaction when people from around the village appreciate the quality of your produce. It feels amazing,” says Nira.
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