This man gives the anonymous dignity in death

Published on Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 18:04 in India section: CNN-IBN
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Faizabad: In a bustling lane in Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh, Mohd Sharif stands out in the crowd. When all around him are living each day, fighting their own battles, 75-year-old Sharif is turning the wheel for the poor and sometimes the dead.

They say tragedy changes lives. It certainly did for Sharif when his eldest son, Rais Khan, died under mysterious circumstances. A month after he disappeared, the police handed over to him a packet containing his son's clothes. Overwhelmed with grief, Sharif gathered courage and decided no one else would suffer death in anonymity.

“We searched for one month and then the police gave us his shirt. Then we found out that he is dead. We hope this does not happen to anyone,” Sharif said.

It is at the small graveyard Taad ki Takiya that Sharif Bhai finds peace. In the last 15 years, he has laid many an unclaimed body to rest, Hindu and Muslim.

“Every human being has the same blood. I don’t differentiate between Hindus and Muslims,” Sharif said.

For a cycle mechanic by profession, Sharif barely makes both ends meet. His family comprises of an ailing wife who still grieves for her son and a young daughter who has to be married off, but personal battles can wait for another day.

'I aspire to make a difference'

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IIT-Madras graduate Apoorve Dubey.

"I aspire to make a difference in the lives of people around me," says Apoorve Dubey, who at 26 delivers motivational lectures in schools and colleges, works as a software engineer with Symantec and has also written a book The Flight Of Ambition.

"No, I may not be able to change the world. But that should not stop me from changing someone's world," says the IIT-Madras graduate, who also volunteers with the Akshar Bharti programme, an initiative meant for taking quality education to the underprivileged masses.

The programme, which began two years ago, has about 140 libraries across the country.

Apoorve is also an executive member of the Kalinga Kusum Foundation which addresses rural education via vocational centres.

When you ask him how it all began he recalls his days at IIT-Madras.

"A friend took me to a small house close to our campus where a couple lived with some 20 children!" he says. "Most of them were between two and 14. As I wondered why they had so many children when they clearly couldn't take care of them, the friend mentioned that all but two of the kids were adopted!"

All of them, Apoorve says, spoke Tamil, a language he did not speak nor understand. Yet he could feel a deep sense of filial bonding.

"I was shocked to learn that it was an orphanage. The couple had two children; the rest of them had nowhere to go. But all of them stayed like a family. It was difficult to distinguish between the couple's real children and the adopted ones. Muthukumar and his wife Kala treated each of them as their own," he says.

The way the couple treated the adopted kids left an indelible impression on Apoorve. It was then that he made up his mind to make a difference to society.

Whenever he is asked what inspired him to write The Flight of Ambition, images of that small house in Chennai flash before his eyes.

The other person who left a lasting impact was a mathematics teacher at school. "Towards the end of his lecture," Apoorve says, "the topic of discussion would invariably drift towards the greatness of India. You knew he was genuine and wasn't making things up. When we were passing out, we asked him what we could do for the country."

The teacher had a very practical answer: "He told us to simply be honest and do our job in the best manner we could. 'Don't think too big; just look around you and you will have plenty of problems to solve. If you don't fix the problem, no one else will', he said."

"It is imperative that we look to eradicate the problems that we see around us and look beyond narrow boundaries of religion and region," says Apoorve.

Having set up knowledge centres and libraries, Apoorve Dubey now plans to set up medical aid facilities. "We are collaborating with some doctors and will conduct health workshops. Providing medical aid, especially to the rural areas, is very important."

He is busy reaching out to young minds through seminars in schools and colleges to catch 'em young. "Kids are very receptive. Their minds are fertile. I am planting seeds and I am convinced each and every individual will shine like a star."

Image: Apoorve Dubey teaching a class
Photographs: Apoorve Dubey

They sell trash to save lives

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Shail Shah is a 23-year-old IT engineer. He works with Adani Wilmar, a leading edible oil company, but there's something else that keeps this young go-getter busy.

In his free time, Shail along with 65 other young people from Ahmedabad , come together to raise money for deserving, needy families, distribute food and supplies to slum-dwellers and spend time with orphans and old-aged.

While the social activities of this group are varied, one of the more commendable efforts is Shail's initiative to raise money for dialysis patients. He along with 25-year-old Palakh Jain have been raising money by visiting homes, and picking up and selling old newspaper and other recyclable material for the last four years.

People who hear of them through word of mouth or recent news reports call them up and they arrange for the paper or other trash to be picked up. This is then sold at the recyclers', who give them a slightly higher rate than the normal. And this money is channeled into the fund -- a fund provides patients suffering from kidney failure with dialysis. "It is not a one-time expense," explains Shail. These patients need dialyses on a weekly basis and, costing about Rs 12,000-15,000 per month, it is out of reach for many.

But why have they chosen such an unconventional route to raising money? "Well, when you just ask people for money whatever the cause may be, they are reluctant. They are not sure of whether the funds will be utilised for the right purpose, whether the funds will reach the people who need it. This way they can contribute without actually having to give us their money."

The first patient he reached out to was a lady who suffered renal failure during childbirth. Being from an impoverished background she needed help and approached Shail. He extended his assistance from his own pocket but as he learnt of the many others who were suffering just for lack of money, he decided to mobilise funds through his network of friends.

"Another patient, a rickshaw driver, approached me saying that if I could just help him with one week's dialysis, he would live for a week longer enabling him to earn enough money for the next week's session," says Palakh.

So far they have raised Rs 1.72 lakhs but Shail is looking to the future with caution. "While we do want to help more people, we don't want to risk neglecting our older patients. Since dialysis is a recurrent expense we need to ensure that all our patients are taken care of."

The duo has tied up with the Gujarat Kidney Foundation and a panel of six nephrologists. It is from here that deserving patients are identified and assisted. They also collaborate with the Thackershy Trust, where dialysis is administered at a nominal rate. Candidates are screened to make sure that they are truly in need of assistance. The nephrologists charge a marginal amount, which is then covered by the fund.

Apart from this they are also involved in other social activities. They visit old-age homes every fortnight, a school for mentally challenged children every week where they interact with the children and organise dance parties, distribute khichdi and blankets to slum dwellers. A friend's parents have donated two vehicles to the cause, which are used to transport volunteers and supplies every week.

It all began with a drive home from a party. It was winter and this group of youngsters saw people shivering in the cold. This sight prompted them to rustle up some funds to buy them blankets. Since then the group has grown, as has their scope of activity.

And what does the future hold? "Five years down the line, no Indian should die for lack of funds – that is our goal, and we are working towards it," says Shail, brimming with hope and confidence.

You light up my eyes!

KOUNTEYA SINHA TIMES NEWS NETWORK , TOI Crest 21 November 2009, 05:15am IST

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Born with beautiful large twinkling eyes, Padma Devi's newborn son soon became a favourite in her small village in southern Karnataka.

The baby was born underweight and weighed just about 1.6 kg, but the joy of his birth drove concerns about his weight out of his mother's mind. However, two months later, Padma noticed something strange - his lightbrown pupil had become white and he stopped responding to movement.

A subsequent visit to a primary health centre gave Padma a devastating shock - the child was declared irreversibly blind. He was suffering from Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) - the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness in India.

ROP is a condition that affects up to 47 per cent of the babies born below 2,000 grams in India. Of these, nearly 20 per cent go blind if not treated on time. Interestingly, none of these children are born with ROP. Premature babies actually go on to develop it between one to three months after birth. Strangely, even as vitamin A deficiency and corneal problems have received adequate consideration and funding from the government, retinal malfunctions that account for 22 per cent of the childhood blindness cases in India have failed to draw requisite attention from the relevant authorities.

With the Union health ministry yet to realise the seriousness of this problem, the fight against ROP is now being led by two unlikely heroes in Karnataka - Dr Anand Vinekar, a paediatric retinal surgeon armed with a laser machine and a camera the size of a 165-litre fridge on the backseat of his Qualis, and Krishna, a 25-year-old technician who has barely cleared middle school.

For the past two years, Dr Vinekar, head of Narayana Nethralaya Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology's department of paediatric retina, and Krishna - a lab technician trained to identify various stages of ROP with nearly 100 per cent accuracy by just looking at images - have been traversing the most backward roads of Karnataka for 13 hours a day, stopping at villages, screening newborns for ROP and surgically treating those who need it on the spot with the laser machine.

However, what's creating waves internationally is their latest project - a Tele-ROP model. This is how it works. Trained technicians visit remote villages, capture retinal images with a special portable digital wide-field camera (capable of seeing 130° of the retina with one single shot). These are then sent via email to a special server. Retinal experts sitting miles away view the images and give their diagnosis within minutes. The technician then informs the mother about ROP and gets the child treated by a Narayana Nethralaya ophthalmic surgeon.

"India has less than 300 retinal surgeons,"says Dr Vinekar. "That's why we are training common people to become technicians - those who can just look at images and detect stage one to stage five ROP, negating the requirement for a doctor. It is easy to take a retinal image, so we are training technicians to analyse the images and diagnose. Due to the massive number of babies that need to be screened, and the limited number of trained physicians, there is no other way. At present, babies born in rural areas are either never screened or screened too late for ROP, which can be prevented by timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment. That's why we are now creating self-sufficient districts - training ophthalmologists from peripheral healthcare centres to treat ROP besides having two technicians per district. Besides Karnataka , a similar project is underway in West Bengal." Till now, they have screened over 1,700 infants around a 350-km radius of the Nethralaya. Over 155 kids from neonatal centres in 18 hospitals in south Karnataka's seven districts have been treated.

The ministry has finally taken note of their efforts and through a publicprivate partnership decided to incorporate the model in India's National Rural Health Mission. Six more districts in Karnataka are now being added for the out-reach programme, which will ultimately be taken across the country. "A number of Southeast Asian and African countries are facing similar problems with ROP and have a shortage of trained ophthalmologists," Dr Vinekar says. "India has proved that a technician-driven model works. What's worse about ROP is that the retina does not look abnormal from outside till it reaches stage five when the eye looks white in the centre. The blindness is irreversible then. Till now, we have taken 100,000 images. To ensure that data is not lost via transit on the net, we have developed a specialised server where experts log in, see images and give their diagnosis. The software is now also being incorporated in an iPhone so that live images can be transferred via SMS. This will enable the iPhone to allow experts sitting anywhere to access images taken in any part of the country."

Blind spot

India is home to one fourth of the world's blind children, making it the world's blind children's capital Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) affects up to 47% of the babies born below 2,000 grams in India India has 24 million live births annually, of which 8.4% babies are born below 2,000 grams Of these 15-20 % will go blind if not treated in time Blindness sets in when the child is 4-6 weeks old and becomes complete before the tenth week ROP mainly affects premature infants born before 31 weeks of gestation (a full-term pregnancy has a gestation of 38-42 weeks) The smaller a baby is at birth, the more likely it is to develop ROP ROP was first diagnosed in 1942 ROP is classified in five stages, ranging from mild (stage I) to severe (stage V) Babies can be treated between stages II and III ROP occurs when abnormal blood vessels grow and spread throughout the retina. These vessels are fragile and can leak, scarring the retina and causing retinal detachment - the main cause of blindness

This man saves lives, one click at a time

Original Article : Link ,

October 20, 2009 15:10 IST , Rediff.com , Abhishek Mande

For over ten years now, Khushroo Poacha has stood by the sole belief that to do good work you don't need money. Poacha runs www.indianblooddonors.com (IBD), a site that lets blood donors and patients in need of blood connect with each other almost instantaneously. He also does not accept cash donations.

The site has been live for almost ten years and with over 50,000 donors in its database, IBD is perhaps a classic example of what the Internet is truly capable of. But more importantly, it is a reflection of a single human being's desire to make a difference to this world.

It all started in the mid-'90s when Khushroo Poacha, an employee with the Indian Railways in Nagpur saw a doctor being beaten up because he couldn't save a patient's life. No one in the mob seemed to understand that it was the lack of blood that caused the death.

"A few years later, I witnessed the death of a welder because he couldn't get blood. The two incidents really shook me up," Poacha says, "And that was when I expressed to my wife my desire of doing something."

Poacha, however, had no clue about how he could make a difference until one day, sitting in a cyber cafe with a 56 kbps connection, the idea came to him.

"I did not know head or toe of the Internet, let alone about domain names, but I knew this would be the tool that would make a difference," he says, explaining the dotcom extension to the site.

Over the next few months, Poacha liquidated practically all his savings, purchased a domain name and started up indianblooddonors.com.

"During the time, there were no companies booking or hosting web domains in India. I was paying USD 300 every three months to keep the site live and running. Meanwhile, I had spent almost Rs 40,000 in developing the site and had gone practically bankrupt," he says.

Poacha says he even went to a local newspaper to place an ad. "I needed visibility and that was the only way I thought I could reach out to the people. The day the ad appeared, I was expecting a flood of registrations," he recollects. "No one registered."

The silver lining to the dark cloud came when someone from the outskirts of his hometown Nagpur contacted him, expressing interest. "It was a saving grace," Poacha says.

Meanwhile, the dotcom bubble had burst and Poacha was being told what a fool he had been. And then there were household expenses to be taken care of too.

"There were many occasions when unpaid phone bills would be lying in the house and there would be no money to pay them off," Poacha recollects, adding that "things always have a way of sorting themselves out. And mysteriously during such times, a cheque would make its way into the mailbox."

Poacha admits that his wife was quite apprehensive about his endeavour. "But she believed in me," he says, "And that has made all the difference."

Visibility, however, was still an issue. No publication was willing to write about him. No major hospital or blood bank was interested in taking his calls.

And then the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake happened. As visuals of the devastation flashed before his eyes on television, Poacha realised yet again he had to do something.

Only this time he knew just what.

"I called up (television channel) Zee News and requested them to flash the site's name on the ticker and they agreed."

Five minutes later, the ticker was live. Ten minutes later, the site crashed.

"I spoke to the people who were hosting the site (by now website hosting had started off in India) and explained to them the situation. They immediately put me on a fresh server and over the next three days or so I received some 3,500 odd registrations," Poacha recollects.

Realising the difference he had made, the 42-year-old started working on getting visibility again.

Over the next few months, Poacha had contacted every major magazine and sure enough, a few responded. "Outlook (magazine) wrote about me, then (British newspaper) The Guardian followed suit and then came the BBC," he says.

Along the way, IBD had also gone mobile. All you had to do was type out a message and send it to a short code and you'd have a list of blood donors in your inbox.

As luck would have it, the service became far too popular for Poacha's pocket. "By then I had stopped taking cash donations and had to discontinue it," he says.

Interestingly, IBD is not yet registered as an NGO. "We function as individuals. We don't take donations and only accept bumper stickers (of IBD) and postage stamps to send out those stickers and create awareness," he says, "I was asked to deliver a lecture at IIM during a social entrepreneurship seminar and was asked what my sustenance model was. I replied I didn't have one. And I have been doing this for the last ten years."

Today, the database of IBD is growing at the rate of 10-15 users every day and the requests have grown from 25 to 40 per day.

Poacha says he eats, drinks and breathes IBD. "The zeal I had ten years ago has not diminished and the site continuously sees innovation." The latest, Poacha tells us, is the option of being an exclusive donor to one patient.

"During my journey, I realised there were some patients who required blood every month. So if you want, we can put you onto them so you can continue making a sustained difference to one person's life."

IBD is currently on an auto pilot mode and Poacha continues to keep his day job. He says, "Initially I would take the calls and personally connect the donor with the patient's relative. But I know only three languages and I'd get calls from all over India," he laughs.

Poacha recounts an incident that never left him: "A man from Chandigarh called me and told me he was desperately seeking A-ive blood for his 2-year-old. About five minutes after the call, he got the (difficult to find) blood group he needed. Soon after the surgery he called me up crying, thanking me for saving his child's life. For me, it was just another day at work. But his whole world was at stake that day. I can never forget that call."

Last year Poacha was invited to the Asian Social Entrepreneurs Summit 2008 in South Korea where venture capitalists argued that it wasn't possible to sustain an endeavour without money. He says, "I pointed out that Mother Teresa had no revenue model when she started the Missionaries of Charity. If you want to do good work, you simply do it."

For someone who has sustained his enterprise for a decade with just a few bumper stickers and postage stamps, Khushroo Poacha knows best.

Young India is following her heart, are you?

September 29, 2009 15:45 IST
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The all new world class sea link, the surge of 3G ready mobile phones, India's say in world matters -- we are fortunate to be born in a blooming nation in the 21st century. Sure enough, this is changing the mood of Indian youth. They are game for exploring different and unusual fields and are continually moving farther from the security of 9 to 9 jobs -- they are tending more and more towards something they are passionate about, something that stems from their very heart.

Does all this strike a chord in your heart? Sounds like your story? Then welcome, to India's new-youth bandwagon, which is driving growth like never before. These are the youth, who want to work, but on their terms and do just what their heart says. YOU could be a part of this brigade.

India is following her heart

Over the past few years, many enthusiastic souls have been quietly and voluntarily involving themselves with causes like educating children and adults in the underdeveloped sections of cities, environmental drives including no pollution drives, plant more trees campaigns, no honking campaigns, liberation and education of child labourers, development of small villages and much more.

Janhvi Somaiya is passionate about the work she does, "I have been visiting a village called Saphale on the outskirts of Mumbai , for six years now. It has been an enriching experience and I am happy I can make a difference to their lives."

Meenakshi Iyer from Chennai, a member of the Satark Nagarik Sanghathan that works towards making people aware of the Right to Information Act says, "I have made it my life's mission to make citizens aware and alert of their rights."

Jishaan Roy, a final year medical student from Kolkata, believes in disseminating knowledge he has to the underprivileged people.

"I like conducting astronomy workshops for children in Pune. They feel excited about seeing the stars and planets and I feel satisfied to see them so happy with a little effort of mine."

Sunita Mahendra, an accounts manager in a private firm in Delhi helps her local NGO to maintain their finances. "The NGO I volunteer with deals with injured animals and birds. So, it becomes important to keep the finances in check for paying the doctors' bills, for medicines, for other equipment and I'm glad I can help them out with this. I feel good knowing that I too am contributing to the spirit of life."

Young India needs to choose between intent and action

With awakening taking place among the youth of India, there has been a strong urge to strike a balance between domestic, professional and social life. People today want to spend quality time with their family along with putting constructive hours into their professional lives.

However, they also wish to contribute towards building a better society, and give back to the system. What they need is an opportunity to strike a balance by utilising their skills they exercise in the professional field for the cause of building a better society.

Moreover, the time has come to convert intent to real action. Not just to think about doing, but actually doing it. Go ahead and volunteer.

India is looking for volunteers like you

Passionate Indians keen to work for the society now get a platform in the form of iVolunteer.

iVolunteer, an initiative of MITRA, a not-for-profit organisation working in the social sector in India, is now urging people to go ahead and do it -- in this case, go ahead and volunteer.

iVolunteer India Fellow Professional is an exclusive volunteering programme for 50 Most Passionate Indians to come and share their professional skills in rural development organisations for mutual benefit.

Therefore, if sharing your time as a volunteer enthuses you, if your heart feels that you can give two months of your life to something exciting and help serve a key sector of the country as well, you are in the right place.

You could visit www.ivolunteer.in/professional and find out what is in store for you and what fits you the best. We wish you the best of luck!

The sickle and the superwoman

Rohit Viswanath, Nilofer D'Souza / Forbes India

Published on Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:40 in India section

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In Greek mythology, a tribe of women called the Amazons inhabited the island of Themyscira, a world without men. They lived in 1200 BC and were immortalised in Homer's Iliad as the Antianeira - 'they who fight like men'.

Women in Badiya, a tiny hamlet in the Himalayan foothills, may have never heard of the Amazons or the Iliad, but, they run their villages not much unlike the ancient Greeks - with minimal patriarchal interference.

Rural India is undergoing a gradual change in its social landscape. As more men leave for cities in search of the 'great urban dream', women are being thrust into the role of family head, becoming the sole caretaker for everything from farms to parents. According to the Draft National Policy for Women in Agriculture (April, 2008), prepared by the National Commission for Women (NCW), "An estimated 20 per cent of rural households are de facto female headed due to widowhood, desertion, or male out-migration."

Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, Rita Sharma, says, "We are aware of the phenomenon. Nearly 13 per cent of rural households are headed by wo-men today."

The figures may vary, but it is still considered significant as in the 1970s only about five per cent of rural households were headed by women, according to a Delhi-based labour economist. It's not as if women were never involved in agriculture. According to NCW's draft policy, women constitute 40 per cent of the agricultural workforce. But it was the men who took decisions about which crops to grow, how much bank loan to take and whether it was worth pledging the farm to a moneylender.

Now, the women are getting to make some of the decisions. Yet, even as they step into their husbands' shoes, they have had to face several challenges. The biggest constraint remains less access to land, credit and technical assistance. In addition, they have to battle tradition, and deal with organisations and equipment geared to service men.

Filling the Vacuum

The man-to-woman ratio in Badiya village, in Tehri district of Uttarakhand state, has witnessed a gradual decline over the years and is now approximately 30:70. Joining the army seems to be a favourite option for the men.

Vinita is one such farmer who now heads the household while her husband is away. Her family owns about 400 square metres of farm land. Like before, she gets up at sun rise, tends to the livestock, works on the land, and also looks after her three young children and aged mother-in-law. But the difference is that she's the boss now. She sells the surplus and uses the money for household expenses.

But Vinita is an exception here rather than the norm. Most women in a similar position take over production of food crops for home consumption rather than for the market.

The women of Badiya still don't have a say in property rights. That means they can't negotiate with banks or micro-finance organisations. In any case their holdings are so fragmented and the scale of their farming so small that they don't pledge the land.

The vacuum created by the men leaving the villages has forced the women to come together. In Badiya, the women have formed a self help group to address common problems.

They pooled in their meagre funds to buy fertilisers and other inputs. As this co-operation helped increase farm productivity, though marginally, the women began to sell whatever little surplus they grew each season. Over a period of time, they had enough to pool in Rs 320 each to set up a shop of their own which became the first one to make daily provisions available to the hamlet.

A similar pooling of resources is helping women in villages around the town of Doddaballapur in Karnataka. Under the Government's Stree Shakthi programme, self help groups of women pool in funds, from which money is lent to those in need.

These self help groups are also successfully challenging the patriarchal land ownership. In some cases, men have added their wives' names as co-owners of their land. Where such joint ownership doesn't materialise, help comes in the form of a pool-in fund run by the self-help groups. However, in the total number of title deeds, women account for just 10 to 20 per cent of ownership, according to State Vice-President of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (a farmer's movement), N Venkata Reddy.

Senior Fellow, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, Dr Surabhi Mittal, says, "Policy must be conducive to the changes that are happening. Once married, the women should have a joint title to the land, so that they become eligible for credit, Kisan Credit Cards and other government schemes for small and marginal farmers." Joint ownership will enable them to access various entitlements essential for commercially viable small scale farming, including horticulture and animal husbandry.

Outside Help

Being responsible for the farming doesn't come easy to women. Duties like ploughing and harvesting that were taken for granted as part of a man's chore have become an issue. Also, the additional responsibility often adds to their drudgery. "The women of rural Uttarakhand work an average of 14-18 hours a day. Women who want their children to go to school take on the work children traditionally did such as caring for cattle and poultry," says Manager Uttaranchal Gramya Vikas Samiti, Pawan Kumar.

In Uttarakhand, NGOs working to improve rural livelihood realised that the women needed help. Kumar says, "We realised that the women's lives were tough given the sheer amount of their workload. Our main goal was drudgery reduction."

They helped introduce high-yielding varieties of seeds and also improved agriculture tools. The women have now begun growing cash crops like mustard and groundnuts that fetches them a higher margin in the market.

Sharma says the Government is keeping a close tab on the trend. "Even under our own employment schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, almost 50 per cent are women, going up to 80 per cent in states like Tamil Nadu," she says. According to her, Government agencies are working on various initiatives to help women farmers. Earlier agricultural extension agents were largely men. Now more women have been encouraged to join the profession. The men have been trained to be sensitive to the women farmers. The Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, for example, is developing lightweight equipment, including ploughs, keeping in mind the needs of women farmers.

For Vinita's family, earlier, the paddy harvest was just enough for the family of six for three months. Now with the improved seeds and soil fertility, the yield has increased five-fold.

The concept of banking was introduced to the village. "Bank itself was a foreign word, unheard of in our remote hamlet of Badiya. Today, having seen the advantages of banking each and every woman has come forth and proudly states that they all visit the bank at least once in two weeks," says leader of a self help group, Prameela.

Breaking Social Barriers

With men gone, some social barriers are breaking down too. Vinita, an upper caste woman-farmer, would never have joined hands with Ranjana Devi from a lower caste, while her husband was around. But today all village women come together at meetings where they discuss and solve problems over a cup of tea. This cup of tea hasn't been an easy brew.

They have had to battle old prejudices. During weekly meetings held at members' homes, tea is served in metal and plastic glasses depending on what caste one belongs to. "Elders still don't allow us to mingle at par, hence these practices, but we have overcome all our mind blocks personally," says Prameela.

Missing meetings is out of question. It is, after all, a matter of survival. The initial feeling of incompetence and lack of confidence was overcome within a few meetings.

Challenging the Old Order

The new role assumed by women has changed the perception of their family members towards them. La­kshmi, a woman farmer from Badiya says, "Earlier my husband would speak and I would listen. Today, all major househ­old decisions are taken through mutual discussion. Even my in-laws respect me because I have become a major breadwinner."

Consultancy group Pragmatix carried out a survey in five Uttarakhand districts. It found a 93 per cent rise in the number of women influencing household decis­ions in the last three years. But some old attitudes die hard. While men are receptive to the changing status of women, they still view domestic duties as part of the woman's responsibility.

With all the hurdles and the extra work, what is driving the women to take up a bigger responsibility in the villages? Hope for a better life for their children. Back in Badiya, Vinita says she is much more confident today that her 15-year-old daughter will get good education. After all, Vinita is not only making money of her own but also getting to decide how it will be spent.