Sreelatha Menon: Not just credit

EAR TO THE GROUND

Spurred by an NGO, women in Alwar, Rajasthan form 375 self-help groups to fund their dairy dreams with loans worth Rs 2.75 crore.

Once upon a time, in the 1980s, Imarti Devi did little else apart from tending cattle and doing household work. There wasn't much of an income either, apart from what the family got from farm labour.

In 1989, an NGO, Pradaan, included her in a group of 20 women it formed in her village. It was a self-help group, she recalls with a certain nostalgia today.

Imarti was asked to chip in two rupees every week to a common kitty. After six months, the group was asked to open a bank account.

She and her fellow group members were told that they would be given a loan four times their savings. So the women increased their savings to Rs 10 a week. Many women bought cattle and began dairying. While others who had cattle, added to the numbers.

Now, 15 years later, Imarti's group is not alone in the village. There are 375 groups, all formed by the NGO . The groups have been made into a federation. Each of the group has savings worth at least Rs 2 lakh, she says.

The federation itself has recorded loan disbursements worth Rs 2.75 crore, she tells a huge audience in Delhi.

As president of the federation, Imarti has come a long way. "Pradaan had made 20 groups before it left. Now we are 375 and on our own," she says. The federation has also appointed an accountant for a salary of Rs 4,500. They also have a computer 'munshi' trained by Pradaan to compile the data on money.

Once the NGO had withdrawn, the groups began to pay service charges for sustaining the entities, she says.

Yet this was not Mohammad Younus revisited. It was not an example of credit or micro credit or bank linkages opening exit doors out of poverty. In fact, it was milk market linkage more than bank linkage at work.

It is a living model of what is called livelihood finance in the words of its proponent Vijay Mahajan. Imarti's was one of the first groups he set up when he was with Pradaan. "Credit alone cannot remove poverty, least of all small amounts of Rs 2,000 or Rs 1,000 which one can get through micro credit," says Mahajan.

Pradaan had provided other support interventions in the form of veterinary care for the cattle used in dairy farming, milk market linkages and supporting the groups through assistance in accounting work. "These three services helped make the groups strong and reach where they are today," says Mahajan.

Interventions to increase productivity in existing occupations (farming and dairying in the case of Alwar women), rather than small credit, can help them make that leap out of the red. Ask any SHG 'beneficiary' anywhere, all you hear most of the time is a cold, long sigh ...never the full throated hurrah of Imarti Devi.