Livelihood
Stories
Hembai Didi – Reeling Yarn for a Difference!
“We have no agricultural land and we worked on other’s agricultural land at the time of agricultural season, three to four months a year. Rest of the months we had to depend on the forest or sit without any work.” This is how Hembai Didi of Tarpali remembers her life just six years ago. Back then, the funds that her husband earned from his work as a mason, made it difficult to sustain their family of six children. Often, in times of emergency when they had no money, they had to mortgage their valuables at the local money lender. Once when Hembai was very ill, the family had to mortgage her small piece of land before the government would provide them another plot.
Hembai joined a PRADAN-facilitated group by the name Saraswati Mahila Swayamm-Shahayata Samuh, comprising of twelve members, in the year 2000. She started by saving 10 cents (about five rupees) per week, and gradually began to accumulate her savings. Her group took a loan of $ 220 (Rs. 10,000) from Raigarh Kshatriya Grameen Bank after two years of group formation. She borrowed $ 22 (Rs 1,000) from this loan, and used it to repay loans given at a higher interest, that she had taken previously for her daughter’s marriage. The group repaid the $ 220 loan, and in 2003, took another loan of $ 550 (Rs. 25,000). From this, she borrowed $ 35 (Rs. 1,600), just in time for her second daughter’s marriage. After this, the group took a loan of $ 1,330 (Rs. 60,000), from which she borrowed $ 220 (Rs. 10,000) to use for renovating and enlarging her home.
Hembai had also started reeling silk yarn from cocoons three years earlier. She bought a reeling machine from the Sericulture Department, Chhatisgarh. Training for the trade was arranged by PRADAN. As the supervisor, Hembai maintains the accounts of cocoons used by eight reelers under her. She boils the cocoons according to the daily demand of the reelers and distributes them. She has now learnt how to repair different parts of the machine, without any assistance. Her expertise has refined incredibly as almost all of her yarn is ‘Grade A’ yarn that sells at a high value. She reels about two kilograms of fine quality yarn per month, working about four to five hours per day ,and earning $ 22 (Rs. 1,000) from her efforts. Apart from this, she earns $ 13 (Rs. 600) as a Supervisor. This income now comprises the main stable source of livelihood for the family.“We have taken 2.5 acres of land on lease, and also paid back the loan taken from the moneylender, where my jewellery and land was mortgaged,” she declares with enthusiasm. She has stopped working in others’ fields, and now wants to engage in modern agriculture on her own land. She has plans to teach her third daughter the skills she has learned, so as encourage her to become self-dependent, when she gets married in two years at the age of eighteen. Her husband wants to purchase a Jersey cow to sell milk. Her three younger children are studying in the school, and they have also arranged tutoring classes for them. The family has plans to repair the rest of the house, hoping, at a minimum, to construct concrete walls.