Above: One of the six women's groups that has purchased goats for rearing, using their own savings and small loans obtained through the Purulia Microfinance Initiative

The district of Purulia, located in the southwest corner of the state of West Bengal and six hours by train from Calcutta, is a remote and agriculturally-based district, with traditional farmers constituting the majority of the population. The Arsha Development Block, the area of Purulia where Village Earth focuses its current efforts, is a tribal-dominated area of 50 villages. The majority of people that reside in Arsha live in severe poverty, which harms both their well-being and the well-being of the surrounding forests of Ayodhya Hill. The people of Arsha are rural, constituting a population of 59,000, and live on marginal agro-based forms of income. Many do not own or have access to land and depend on seasonal migration for their livelihoods. As much as 85 percent of the population of Arsha live below the poverty line.

The goal of Village Earth is to help in building the capacity of communities in the Arsha Development Block. This may lend the villages the opportunity to access and manage the resources needed to achieve their vision for the future. Through directly communicating with the local residents of the villages, we hope to represent their perspectives, thus allowing for the implementation of projects that are culturally appropriate to each specific village.

BACKGROUND

Dr. Milan Dinda and Dr. Mousumi Dinda are a husband and wife team that together founded Village Earth-Purulia after taking part in Village Earth's two-week training in Participatory Practices in Sustainable Development. The training provided them with tools, resources, and skills that would allow them to return to West Bengal and realize their vision of serving the people of Purulia by creating an organization grounded in the Village Earth approach to sustainable development. They have since been working closely with villagers in the Arsha Development Block and, with them, have developed two specific projects which operate concurrently: a water project, which aims to address the severe annual water shorages in the region, and a microfiance project, which aims to increase the incomes of tribal women of Arsha.

THE PURULIA WATER PROJECT

After Village Earth-Purulia conducted strategic planning meetings with the villages in the Arsha Development Block, three villages declared water scarcity as their primary concern and expressed a desire to develop strategies to improve their current water supply system. Since then, Village Earth, Village Earth-Purulia, and the Colorado State University chapter of Engineers Without Borders have been collaborating with villagers in Bagmundi, Juri, and Pitati to increase water security, villages that suffer severe water shortages for 4-5 months each year. During the dry season, the river and most of the water resources become dry, requiring people to walk 4-5 kilometers twice a day to collect drinking water. On average, these villagers only have access to 1 liter of water per person per day. 

In 2003 Nathan Toohey, a representative of Village Earth, conducted a hydraulic needs assessment for Bagmundi, Juri, and Pitati. Through personal communication with the residents of these villages, Mr. Toohey gained insights into the local perspectives, as indigenous knowledge is very rich in this region of India. Steps toward improvement include the establishment of water storage facilities and irrigation technologies appropriate to each village’s existing infrastructure. This project has resonated positively with the local government as well as local landowners, who have also offered their resources for the hydraulic needs initiatives.

Two members of the Engineers Without Borders Purulia team made a trip to Purulia in 2005 to obtain more information about the current water supply in the three villages. Using this information, the team will create a number of designs that employ different methods for increasing water security which they will propose to each of the three villages. The people of these villages will then decide which of the options best suits their needs, ensuring that they remain the driving force behind the particular water supply systems that are eventually implemented.

PURULIA MICROFINANCE INITIATIVE

The Microfinance Initiative emerged from organized groups of tribal women living in Arsha as a solution to improve the economic condition of tribal women in the region and decrease the degree of exploitation of Ayodhya Hill, the natural forests in the region, which have become additional victims of the acute poverty in Purulia. The Initiative began in April 2006 and, with seed money provided by Village Earth, 60 women are currently involved in the project, who hope to expand participation to as many as 500 women and represent all 50 villages located within Arsha.

Village Earth-Purulia, under the leadership of Milan and Mousumi Dinda, has been working with people from Arsha to develop and implement strategies to protect Ayodhya Hill. It has created 10 Forest Protection Committees (FPCs) who work on creating livelihood strategies that do not require extraction of the Hill’s resources. These Forest Protection Committees operate via 50 Self-Help Groups (SHGs), with as many as 10 people per group. It is six of these Self-Help Groups, representing 60 tribal women, that have undertaken the Microfinance Initiative, and have collaborated with Milan and Mousumi to establish rules and guidelines of the project and move the project forward. Microfinance, the provision of small loans and credit to groups of poor people to use for investing in self-employment programs, has had many documented successes in other parts of India and especially in Bangladesh, which shares a border with West Bengal.

The Self-Help Groups intend to use the small loans they receive to invest in income-generating activities such as tilapia farming, producing and marketing traditional crafts, such as teak-leaf plates, and animal husbandry. Village Earth-Purulia anticipates that these women can generate up to 100 percent returns on their investments through these types of activities, with the potential of significantly increasing their incomes and their living conditions. We are encouraged to see these 6 Self-Help Groups beginning self-employment enterprises, and Village Earth is working actively to raise addtional funds needed to expand the project to allow more tribal women to participate.

If you are in the United States and are interested in donating to help the people of Purulia with their water project or microfinance project you may send a cheque or money order to:

Village Earth
PO Box 797
Fort Collins, CO 80522
USA

For more information contact:

Christine Wheatley, Village Earth Coordinator for Purulia christine@villageearth.org

Or:

Milan and Mousumi Dinda, Co-founders of Village Earth-Purulia
The Village Earth Purulia (City Office)
HIG(U) Block-4, Flat-4
Birati Abason, M.B.Road, PO-Nimta
Kolkata-700049, WB, India
Tel: 91-33-25392394 9831772399 (M)
Fax: 91-33-25391994
E-mail: mkdinda@cal.vsnl.net.in