Rojiroti: Self-help group stories

Rojiroti self-help groups are fulfilling social development purposes, including dispute mediation. The project is also mobilizing people to make their own, proactive decisions about their lives.

One of Rojiroti's illiterate group coordinators recently sacrificed receiving a dowry and chose to marry her son to an educated girl so the new daughter-in-law could help her coordinate groups. Per prevailing custom, the mother-in-law could have received Rs25,000 as a dowry, but in this instance she instead borrowed Rs10,000 from Rojiroti to pay for the marriage. Her story reflects empowerment of women, both in valuing education and in the mother making a non-traditional decision to benefit her family’s livelihood.

Part of Rojiroti’s work is assisting poor people in becoming more independent. In one of our groups in the Madhepura district of Bihar a group member died unexpectedly and group members asked for Rs10,000 to pay for the funeral. The group had just reached four months of age, had paid Rojiroti fees for group formation, and was due for its first group loan. The Rojiroti team asked the individual members to pledge money to cover the funeral costs to demonstrate their support. Group members should not be wholly dependent on Rojiroti funds. Every member offered some contribution, and they collected Rs2,000. Rojiroti provided the remaining Rs8,000.

During the 2008 flooding in Bihar, much of the Supaul district faced rising flood waters. Fourteen members of a men’s self-help group in Madhubani decided to evacuate but needed money for safe transportation. The group, which had 20 members, agreed to give Rs500 each to five members who had not received loans previously, while eight members of this group who had loan repayments due were told to keep the money to use for their survival until they could return.

A few members remained in the village in an attempt to save their livestock and used the money that remained in the group's cash box for their survival.

All of these group members’ homes were severely damaged, and many livestock died. But the self-help group helped all of its members get themselves and their families so safety – saving some 60 people in all.

Rojiroti is helping poor people take better advantage of their circumstances. The forest department gave 9 acres of land to each household of the Saharia Primitive displaced tribe in Bijeypur district after it established a sanctuary around their former home. They did not have the money to farm their land and so gave it to better-off farmers on a share basis and worked on their own land as wage labourers. Using Rojiroti loans, at least 24 members of the tribe are using 40% of their land, or 2 acres each. They are seeing improved food security, buying assets like livestock, and achieving better access to Public Distribution System shops.

One group member’s husband worked as a halwaha, a form of bonded labour where a big farmer gives a small piece of land to a landless or near-landless person in exchange for work at a low daily rate and for credit. In order to release the family from dependence on the landlord’s credit to buy daily necessities, the wife took small loans from her group to buy wheat and rice from a government programme at a subsidized rate. She then borrowed Rs4,000 from Rojiroti and used part of this to repay the family’s debt to the landlord. With the remainder of the loan, the husband took land for farming on share basis and in the first year was able to repay the remainder of the money owed from sales of produce. Then in the following year they borrowed Rs5,000 to take some land on lease, in addition to the sharecropped land. (Farming leased land is much more profitable than sharecropping because, having paid rent in money, the entire harvest belongs to the farmer).

So having freed her husband from bondage, the member and her family are now independent tenant farmers working land on share and lease basis.

Credit from a self-help group has improved one widow’s position as head of her family. She has three sons, two who live and work in Delhi and another who lives with her and does cultivation on a share basis.

Initially the member took small loans for repairing her house, and eventually, with the maximum loan of Rs4,300, she built a Pucca (i.e. concrete) house.

She borrowed money to buy seeds and fertilizers for her son, and he was able to take more land for sharecropping. The member also used self-help group funds to buy a second bull and a thrasher.

The member plays a crucial role in making important decisions related to cultivation and purchases. In the absence of her two sons, she is managing a big family on her own.

Sometimes loans from self-help groups allow a family to take more risks in securing employment. In this case, a woman’s husband went to Delhi to find a job, knowing that his wife would not go hungry because she could turn to the group for money to buy food.

The husband later returned to his village and started a musical group with support from the self-help group. He started earning good seasonal income during marriages and other cultural functions.

The same family bought a cow with a loan from the group. They planned to sell the mature cow at a profit and invest the earnings in a grocery shop.

The family has increased its sources of income and is attaining consistency and regularity in generating income.