Reflections from the Field

It seems like it was only yesterday that I was in Gaya for the second time, working closely with BASIX’s The Livelihood School (TLS) team, trudging through our target villages to design and implement a targeting methodology and tools to help us identify the poorest households for inclusion in the ‘Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest’ (LPP) project. One and a half years have flown by like the blink of an eye, and with age, my cognizance of the speeding up of time is both exhilarating and flustering at the same time. Last August, our team of three slogged through kilometers of muddy or flooded lanes through villages absent of sewage and waste management systems. The monsoon rains, albeit short-lived, were particularly heavy those few days we worked to test the targeting process with a sample group of the target population before the final process would be scaled up across the entire project area to complete the final selection of the two hundred poorest households. We began by holding a community meeting to share the project goal and objectives with the entire village and its leaders before engaging in what is called Participatory Wealth Ranking (PWR), an interactive and inclusive method of rural appraisal, whereby the community members themselves define what poverty means in their own context and categorize individuals according to local definitions. Shortlisted households in the bottom wealth category were visited individually and further surveyed to collect what we call a Progress out of Poverty Index® (PPI®) score, a tool developed by the Grameen Foundation to determine the likelihood of a household or individual falling above or below a specified poverty line. A household survey capturing a range of data on each household on their cash flow, livelihood portfolio, food security, health, and other indicators coupled the earlier tools. The final data was measured against selection criteria that helped us identify the poorest households in a given community. A multilayered filtering process ensures that interventions are reaching households not only living on less than $1.25/day, but are living well below localized definitions of poverty.

Yesterday was a day of achievement for us, as a team. After months of hard work to identify the “right” livelihood activities to be promoted through the program and develop training modules and resources, we finally launched our first set of trainings in the supplemental income generating (SIG) activities- wage based, low skill jobs that provide nominal increases in income to the households to help meet their immediate consumption needs. We are focusing for now on two activities- kitchen gardening and agarbatti (incense stick) rolling. While both are existing activities in the panchaayat we work in, these women are either not engaged due to a lack of awareness or confidence in how to take up the activity or have been unable to access value addition in the form of skills enhancement to roll higher quality (and hence, higher priced) agarbatti or training in agriculture methods to grow vegetables more efficiently throughout the year. In the case of agarbatti, the activity involves direct contact with harmful substances that are breathed in by women and children alike. Food is often eaten without washing the substance off their hands, so incorporating health and hygiene practices into the training module is another value addition. An interesting fact I learned during my time here is that Bihar is the second largest producer of agarbatti in India! Many of us were raised with agarbatti (commonly referred to as oodhupaathi in Tamil) lit in our homes, sometimes each evening, but without doubt, on religious holidays and festivals. Each time I light an agarbatti stick, I will always think of these poor women from whose hands it originated. I hope you will too!

ASHG members in Shivrampur village proudly show their training outputs

ASHG members giggle shyly as the field project manager discusses agarbatti income potential


Rekha Devi, already a highly skilled roller, is helping to enhance her peers' skills

I’ve begun sensing a deeper, intangible change among these women with each and every visit I’ve made these last one and a half years—something more profound than any monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plan can capture. It is a change based on the human connection, largely due in part to something called trust. The women have extended this invaluable commodity to us, as service providers and as individuals intent on helping improve their lives with no expectation of anything in return from them. Yesterday, as they opened up to us at the advent of our first set of livelihood promotion activities in Shivrampur village, I was touched by the apparent shift from their skeptical, introverted selves, constantly averting eyes, faces absent of smiles, to vivacious, outspoken, and empowered women, who were keen and proactive in sharing feedback and a sincere gratitude: “Many others have come and gone. We have been cheated many a time. You people have worked so hard for us, more than our own family members would do for us. And, now you are doing something for us.” As discussed in my post 'August Field Visits,' these women and their families have lived their entire lives knowing nothing more than depravity, exploitation, and neglect. As they practiced rolling more and more fine incense sticks, they proudly raised their finished products, seeking our approval and that of the trainer. We laughed together during those subtle moments of humor that we’ve all grown to silently notice through over one year of interactions.

For the first time, they opened up and shared the initial reservations and reason for opposition from their husbands to partake in the program. Their husbands would desperately ask, “Do you even know who these people are? Do you know their background or their intentions? How do you know that they won’t actually sell you on the market?” To share such content, which in itself is considered too shameful to be discussed with strangers, and men at that, was another indicator of their newly cultivated trust. My heart became heavy when I learned that women from these very communities had been victims of human trafficking. In a society where honor and dignity are directly correlated with a certain notion of “purity/tarnishing” of the body, this so-called livelihood “option” (or coercion, in some instances) can tip the life-or-death scale weighed by narrow-minded local leaders and destroy the lives of so many.

Last week, 4 Community Resource Persons (CRPs) from the World Bank-funded Bihar Rural Livelihoods Program (BRLP) visited each of our ASHGs to assess their current development levels and identify areas requiring further strengthening over the next few months. CRPs are women leaders who've demonstrated a will to effect positive change in their own lives as well as those in their communities. Through interactive training sessions, these incredible women shared their own stories of self-empowerment and imparted to our members the importance of the Paanch Sutra or Five Rules adhered to by a strong self-help group: 1) Regular meetings 2) Regular savings 3) Routine inter-lending 4) Regular repayment of loans and 5) Routine record-keeping. It was an incredibly inspiring and humbling experience for us all. These women I call the Fantastic Four are an example, not just for our own clients, but for women everywhere.

BRLP CRP reviews the Paanch Sutra with members


The Fantastic Four: "Yes, we can!"


Our members try to mimic but are still too shy to raise their arms!

Members from Shanthi ASHG receive their savings box, lock, and keys

Photo stream of our clients' children in Pali village:

Coimbatore Calling

As I looked upon the rich, red soil we were descending over from my airplane window, I couldn’t help wondering, “Is this what it feels like?” Denied by our native Sri Lanka and dispersed across the world, my generation of Eelam Tamils raised within the Diaspora are mostly children of immigrants. Gratitude and a particular patriotism for our homelands have been cultivated from birth, but can we ever know a pride for or feel the embrace of our motherland? Given the traumatic events of the past few years, touching ground in Coimbatore felt like the next best thing. After seven intense weeks across Hyderabad, Delhi, and Gaya, I warmly welcomed a reprieve at a home away from home in the rapidly growing Coimbatore or Kovai with arms wide open.

On the way home from the airport, I was overcome by bittersweet emotions as I breathed in the Tamil Nadu air and voraciously absorbed all that is Tamil through my remaining senses- street and shop signs in the Tamil script, conversations and street callings in the Tamil language, and women clad in colorful saris with fresh jasmine flower garlands strung in their hair, bells ringing from their anklets and gold ornamenting their wrists, necks, and ears as they and their families fearlessly made their way to the local markets or to temples to worship. As I conversed about my family’s wellbeing and my work in Gaya with relatives, Tamil trickled off my tongue, and I felt something of a mother’s embrace in that moment- at ease and alive. From birth, we had visited both Eelam and Tamil Nadu every other year to visit family. In the latter, they were relatives who had fled the former in response to the 1983 riots of Black July. In the government-sponsored pogrom, thousands of Tamils were massacred, homes and shops burned to the ground, and tens of thousands more fled as refugees into the arms of other sympathetic and accepting mothers. It was a time I witnessed too young to remember now but has eternally scarred many far more than any physical wound is capable of.

I have the fondest memories of visiting Coimbatore as a child and enjoyed every moment playing tag and hide and seek with my cousins in their three-level rented home in Gandhipuram. My favorite hiding spot was up on the mottamaadi (rooftop) from where one could escape the chaos of the fast growing city and relax meditatively with views of Coimbatore, the sunrise, and the sunset. I loved walking down to Ukkadam and Oppanakkara streets with my Amma and our female relatives, who never passed up the opportunity to buy strings of mallikai poo (jasmine) or kanahaambaram poo, a small, orange colored flower, referred to as ‘paper flower’ in English, to loop into their long, black plaits. I indulged in the kadalai (garbanzo) and kajju (cashew nuts) we bought from a man who sold these roasted and wrapped in newspaper cones from his cart, as he announced his goods for sale throughout the streets of Gandhipuram, plastered with posters of Tamil movie stars cum ‘Gods’ cum politicians. It was incredibly comforting to experience this all again, though admittedly, a bit strange as well to do so on my first trip to Coimbatore without my immediate family.

Tamil movie star cum politician campaign poster


Religious and cultural fusion


Craftsman enlays gold into a necklace; Coimbatore is renowned for its manufacture of gold jewelry

Campaign poster of Jayalalitha, TN's current chief minister and former actress

Auto driver waiting for business

Increased flower sales during Vinayaka Chaturthi

Antique film posters of MGR, Chief Minister of TN in 1977, and a legendry figure of the Taml film industry

Cotton candy in Gandhipuram

Charity

Massive statues of Vinayakar, commonly known as Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu deity of wisdom and good fortune, were erected in temporary mandapas throughout the city, and street vendors displayed hundreds of colorful clay statues of the deity for sale in a range of smaller sizes. The day following my arrival was Vinayaka Chaturthi, commencing a widely celebrated ten-day festival, honoring Vinayakar as superior to all other deities. Each Hindu home installs a clay Vinayakar, specifically purchased to celebrate the festival, and life is symbolically invoked into the statues through the chanting of mantras and offerings of coconut, jaggery, sweets, grass, flowers, vermilion, and sandalwood. Throughout the ceremony, hymns from the Rig Veda, Upanishads, and the Ganesha stotra are chanted. At the end of the poosai (ritual) in our home, I was asked to sing Carnatic songs in praise of the deity before we enjoyed prasaadam (food that has been first offered to God) in the form of delicious aval, a mixture of aval grains, grated coconut, jaggery, and sugar.

A silver Ganesha murti

Ganesha, lord of wisdom and good fortune

Another, more traditional Ganesha murti

Relatives had flown in from all corners of the world to participate in the wedding of my cousin. We shuttled back and forth between relatives’ houses, visiting newly arrived relatives and indulging in meal after meal, snack after snack, and cup after cup of milky, sugary, tea. The gastronomical bliss could also be perceived as agony by the meek or simply an act of overindulgence. The day always starts with one of those ‘out of this world’ cups of tea that never fails to hit the spot, followed by a breakfast composed of idli and sambar or thosai with podi and sambal. Available throughout the day are king coconuts to quench one’s thirst with their fresh water and pulp, additional cups of tea or juice, fried snacks, such as vadai and samosas, and sweets interwoven between rice-and-curry lunches and dinners. I was naturally, then, a happy Coimbatore camper.

My darling nephew, the newest member of the family

Traditional and auspicious Tamil vilaka or lamp

Traditional welcome to any Tamil Hindu wedding

Traditional Tamil wedding band, comprised of nadaswaram and mradangam instruments

Madapam, a sacred structure under which couples are wed in Hindu and Jain traditions

After nearly three days of wedding festivities and a couple more indulging in both family and exquisite, silk sari shopping, it was with a heavy heart that I prepared for my journey back to Gaya, back to work. I was suddenly devastated to leave another de facto home and a place where a large part of my identity flourished. But, I know I’ll be back very soon.