By Maria A. May
For the “Doing while learning” project, I visited two of our Indian practitioner partners at the end of July. First, Amanda Misiti and I spent a week in rural Orissa with Gram Vikas, and then I flew solo to Patna, Bihar to visit Nidan, an urban-based NGO focused on informal workers and their families. I learned a lot about both organizations, and I spent a lot of time looking at them through my “BRAC glasses.” I’ve written up some of my reflections on the visits, and would welcome your thoughts and questions!
The landscape in Orissa was beautiful–really green and hilly. In some places it looks just like Bangladesh, but there are also some nice stretches of hills. One of the first things that I noticed is that the population density is a lot less. The first village we visited had just 30 households.
Key components of the Gram Vikas model are: 1.) *every* household in the village must get a toilet and three water taps. Otherwise Gram Vikas will not help with construction nor contribute any money. 2.) The design includes two rooms for each household–one for bathing, one with a toilet. Each room has a water tap, and another is installed in their home. 3.) Infrastructure for water (pipe + source) has to be built at the same time. Otherwise the burden on women to bring water may increase! Gram Vikas uses sanitation as a platform to begin community mobilization and empowerment of the poor, similar to BRAC’s historical use of finance as its entry into community.
On another note, both Gram Vikas and Nidan do a lot to make sure that the community is clear on what they are doing in the community and they are very transparent about financial information. Gram Vikas has a tower in each community where they work with all the information about who paid for them–usually a mixture of the community, government, and Gram Vikas. Nidan branded their garbage disposal trucks–while it sounds like this may mean they have to field the complaints of residents for all sorts of issues, it’s good public relations and visibility for all citizens of Muzaffapur to know that they are working in partnership with the local government to clean up the city. In what ways does BRAC make itself transparent to its clients and the larger communities?
Nidan is busy and in that adolescent stage of growth (it’s 18 years old) that’s a bit tumultuous, but exciting. Bihar is an interesting place to be right now; a lot of investments going on–some of it is just rhetoric, but in some places the rubber is hitting the road–literally, the communication infrastructure has transformed in the past few years. I spent a lot of time on the highways, so appreciated it firsthand!
There’s a lot about Nidan that reminds me of BRAC. For one, the staffs love the field. I had to beg my way into the head office, and that was after three very full days visiting programs! Most program coordinators spend at least a week in the field monthly, and more if they can.
So what does one find in the field? The first program I saw, a community-based savings group, was modeled on SafeSave, a program started in urban Bangladesh! Women save 20-100 rupees (under $2 USD) a week, and keep it in a collective safe box, under three locks, whose keys are kept with different members. Members’ passbooks get a star stamp for every 20 rupees they save (this makes it easy to count and verify, even if you aren’t great at math). So all the money stays with the group, and they can take loans from the pot at a 2% monthly interest rate. This is cheaper than the local money lender, who charges 10% a month. Given that many had a savings rate of 0% when the group started, an annual savings of $20/yr plus access to low-interest credit is a big deal.
Nidan also has a mini store, Angana that reminded me of Aarong. They thoughtfully (and strategically) took me to visit. They work with several artisan collectives to offer a range of local paintings, clothing, and crafts. They are thinking about how to scale up their sales, either through more stores in Patna, or a web presence. Ideas welcome! They’d love to learn from Aarong on how to improve and grow their enterprise arm.
We visited a waste management program in Muzaffapur, a district about 2-hours from Patna. The municipal corporation has outsourced street and drain cleaning and trash collection to Nidan. They employ 400 sweepers, lorry drivers, drain cleaners, and truck/tractor drivers to clean the whole city daily. They are gradually convincing citizens and shop owners to pay a small fee (30 rupees monthly) for the services. This should soon be a self-sustaining, even profit generating enterprise, that could potentially scale to other municipal areas and help beautify Bihar, not to mention create a much more hygienic urban environment.
One of the highlights of the day was meeting a few bright girls at one of Nidan’s community learning resource centers. When pre-primary gets out at 10:30 AM, the building transforms into a library. Youth who have class in the afternoon, or who have dropped out, and older women can come and read. The center also had a laptop. While there was no formal training, the teacher said that the kids were quick to figure it out. From the looks of it, she was right. These girls could speak basic English phrases, all of which they tried on me. It was great to see such confidence and energy in these young women.
It was great to learn from Nidan and Gram Vikas, but I missed BRAC and Dhaka. Happy to be back!
