From IT firm to tribal hamlet: How one man is empowering women in Odisha

For decades, Durga Puja celebrations at the Das household were a much talked about affair in the small town of Balasore, Odisha. However, what a 24-year-old son of the house couldn’t stomach was the hypocrisy: people would shower respect on goddess Durga’s idol but chase away poor, downtrodden tribal women from the premises. Vikash Das, then an IT security consultant at IBM, was angered by the treatment meted out to a tribal woman back in 2013. He took on the task of “bringing a change” and thus was born, Vat Vrikshya in April 2014, a few months later. The name comes from the Banyan tree under which Das had the initial sessions of conversations with the people from tribal areas. 

“Tribal people were treated badly because they were poor. I knew that the moment I empower them, and they start earning for themselves, respect will come automatically,” says Das. As most of the tasks in a tribal community are done by women, Das knew he would have to help them by teaching them how to manage finances. Because their training must be rounded so that it can be spun off to change the community, Das says:  “Apart from skill-based training, we also teach the women importance of personal hygiene, business and personal finance”. The tribes they work with include Santhals, Munda, Juanga, Bhuiyan, Saora, Dharua and Bonda. 

However, it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Convincing his parents and family was tough. Leaving a plush job in an IT company, and live with the tribals was something Das’ parents didn’t anticipate for their only son. But as they saw his determination and his social vision, they left everything to him. Das stayed for two months with tribal families in Koibania, a tribal hamlet, in Odisha. And, it wasn’t a photo op like politicians. He lived with them to understand their lifestyle and even asked some of his corporate friends to support him. Soon, a core team of seven people started visiting the people in the village and came up with sustainable business models. And that has remained the business strategy of Vat Vrikshya till date – to understand the lifestyle of each tribe, impart them training based on their skills, help them build their products and sell them for earnings. 

If convincing his family was hard, speaking to tribals was harder for Das and his friends. “Women weren’t allowed to step out or speak to us without the presence of a male member. Moreover, they had long since forgotten to trust outsiders,” recalls Das. Not wanting to limit his idea to a mere NGO, Das and his team spoke to people to understand what they wanted. While there were some who were good at stitching, there were others who knew how to make bamboo craft, and other handloom pieces. The team started working with a small group of 100-200 people. They gave the women a seed funding of Rs 3,000. The women knew the work but did not know how to market their products as a lot of middlemen were involved. “We gave them a market to showcase their work without any middlemen, so the profits they earn would be theirs alone and not the middlemen’s”, says Das. 

Cutting out middlemen and agents, Vat Vrikshya connected the tribal women to women entrepreneurs from other villages. A skill development training was organised. The marketing of the products was done door-to-door as well as by selling to the local markets, at tribal exhibitions organised by the government, and on order basis to European countries. Consequently, Vat Vrikshya has been able to increase the sales of tribal crafts by 400 per cent over a period of 12 months across nine tier I and tier II cities in India. Working with approximately 19,000 women in four states: West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, the organisation has also been able to increase family incomes on an average by 350 per cent and successfully promote agro-rural tourism, create 570 entrepreneurs in different non-farming activities, revive tribal handicrafts, and given a brand identity to the tribals. There are about 2,300 women artisans of which 1,500 are a part of Vat Vrikshya and the rest are provided training. Das’ target is to empower 50,000 tribal women by 2025. “We are now looking at expanding to north-east,” he adds.