Tending her half-acre of leased farmland cursed by drought,and bearing her Dalit identity,Baijanti Devi from Sekhwara village in Gaya learnt long ago to live with poverty and social repression. Two years ago,new doors opened for her in the form of the Bihar Rural Livelihood Project (BRLP),locally and popularly known as Jeevika. Since 2007,in 4,000 villages and covering over 5.9 lakh families comprising the poorest farmers,most of them Dalits the project has been working to build a self-sustaining socio-economic system. Initiated by the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society with financial assistance from the World Bank (Rs 264.6 crore),the Bihar government (Rs 29.4 crore),community contribution (Rs 12.6 crore),Jeevika was launched in 2007 in the districts of Nalanda,Gaya,Khagaria,Muzaffarpur,Purnia,Madhubani,Madhepura and Supaul. In the less than three years hence,the project that aims to mobilise farmers into Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and to empower them to retrieve assets,credit and social services,such as food and health security,has come a long way from lowering social barriers to raising productivity,and from introducing farmers to savings to opening doors to credit. Jeevika aims for a three-tier model whereby 10-15 members,mostly women,form an SHG at the community level,represented by a Community Resource Person (CRP). About 20 such SHGs (17,044 SHGs have been formed) collectively form a cluster called Village Organisation (VO). These clusters are provided Community Investment Fund (CIF),a form of grant under the BRLP on a performance-based system,that allows Jeevika members to repay their previous debts,or to use the money to start self-employment enterprises such as grocery stores. I couldnt carry on with agriculture due to water shortage. So I sold my land and opened a general store with the help of money raised by the community, says Baijanti Devi. SHG members are encouraged to spend frugally and to create savings,which can be accumulated and provided as loans to other SHGs. This process is duplicated at higher levels. A group of 300 VOs forms a Block Level Federation (BLF). Since the project was launched,Jeevika villages have built up cumulative savings of Rs 11.02 crore and inter-loans worth Rs 22.32 crore. In a better position to deal with mainstream financial institutions and markets,SHGs have also succeeded in attaining credit worth Rs 8.5 crore from commercial banks,like the Bank of India. A total of 485 saving accounts and 103 loan accounts in the name of SHGs have been opened at our branch,Rs 10.9 crore has been deposited to date. The repayment rate of SHGs under Jeevika stands at 95-98 per cent, says Sunil Narayan,bank manager of Bank of Indias Gaya branch. Baijanti Devi calculates her gains in ways more than monetary. If you come to look at it,there is no individual gain in the sense of my personal earnings shooting up tremendously. However,there are social gains. If there is a problem at one of our sisters home,the money raised from our savings is used to help her. Earlier,we had to go to the moneylender,which used to mean a lot of interest, she says. The project has seen a crumbling of caste and sex barriers. Kunti Devi,a member of Baijantis SHG,said,I am from the Harijan locality. My caste profile,however,has never been an impediment in dealing with Jeevika members of higher castes. Another gain has been in dealing with the middlemens network in the PDS. The PDS dealers used to quote higher prices for all basic commodities. With the help of Jeevika,we took over the PDS unit of Sekhwara in January 2009, says Baijanti Devi. The biggest thumbs-up for the project,ironically,has come from the Naxals. In Dobhi village,as Jeevika members talk to journalists about their efforts to run an open school for children of the Musahar (rat eaters) community,Maoist activists sit in a corner of the compound,listening in. They asked for cuts from the community fund at the beginning,but they have now stopped, says Vinay Vutukuru,a BRLP Consultant from the World Bank.
