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Respected Government

The funds meant for us are lying with you. We, 12,000 Poor Women have not been paid for six months. Please release the wages due to us...

The earthquake in 2001 was devastating to many households who lost their possessions, their houses, their livelihoods and their loved ones. The affected areas were also some of the poorest areas of Gujarat and recovery was most difficult for the poor households. SEWA's 60,000 members were badly affected in the three districts of Patan, Surendranagar and Kutch whose lives had been shattered. SEWA immediately undertook relief work with the members. SEWA tried to restore the livelihoods by finding markets and training early on.

At this stage, an international organization IFAD approached SEWA from Rome and extended its hand to help. It proposed to SEWA to workout a programme which would enable 40, 000 poorest of the poor people to become self reliant, in a time frame of seven years, with the help of livelihood and social security. After detailed discussions with SEWA members, IFAD worked out a huge programme called Jeevika, SEWA & IFAD both believed in the principal of "sustainable self reliance", thus the involvement of local rural women was considered essential in this programme.

Every "poor" and "very poor" household among those affected from the killer quake was identified, and "Jeevika SEWA Mandals" were formed in their villages. District Associations of artisans and agriculture workers promoted by SEWA, i.e. Kutch Craft Association, Banaskantha. DWCRA Mahila Association, &, Surendra Nagar Mahila & Bal Vikas Mandal were already existing in each of these districts, 40,000 affected women from 400 villages were included in these associations.

These Jeevika SEWA Mandals and, District Associations were supported by SEWA's other units like SEWA Academy, SEWA's Health cooperatives, SEWA Housing, SEWA Gram Haat, SEWA Unnat Bazar and other units, to do a commendable job of long-term rehabilitation of affected families of these three districts under Jeevika Project. The project developed by IFAD with SEWA, was approved by the Government of India and to be executed by the Government of Gujarat, and implemented by SEWA, to be completed in seven years.

It was a challenge to identify the poorest of the poor families amidst feelings of fear and instability, to form Jeevika SEWA Mandals of these people, to get cooperation of villagers for these Mandals to establish Gram Samitis (Village Committees), then to work out a need based "village- plan" for the village women, which would generate livelihood and income, to prepare a village budged to suit this plan, to spend accordingly, and to give account of this expenditure. All this work was taking place for the first time in their lives and was not at all easy for them. But this whole process proved to be encouraging, empowering and fruitful for them.

And within a time period of two years, some very tangible, achievements were made. They leant to save and take loans and got themselves free from the clutches of private money lenders to run meetings, to reach markets, to go to consumers and sell their goods, to construct structures, to raise plant nursery, they built check dams, deepened the ponds, increased their ongoing embroidery work, increased the production of salt, developed dry farming, subscribed insurances, did animal husbandry, set-up and developed fodder banks & provided food security. They began preparing against any disaster in future, working towards building capacity to face any such calamity in future. All this could be achieved, because of the active co-operation of the Government of Gujarat.

The families in this area realized that this was a self-help form of employment guarantee for them. They would have enough work for the next years so that they would not have to migrate away but would be able to live a decent life in their own homesteads. For the next few months the village development committees worked hard to ensure enough employment to all in their villages and the families worked hard expecting good returns.

Government of Gujarat felt that the activities should be upscaled and the Village Development Committees along with District Associations enthusiastically developed village level plans and undertook work of check dams, pond digging, embroidery, salt making etc. As the Monsoon approached, Village Committees in every village chalked out the plans, prepared the budgets and by consolidating all the plans and budgets an action plan was prepared and presented before the government. With this the adversities began.

Unfortunately, at this stage Government of Gujarat had second thoughts. We do not know the reasons why. It did not take action on the Jeevika Action plan and decided not to release the money either for the work, already performed or the further employment plans. The action plan of the Jeevika Project was dumped in some cold storage. The account of payments pending with the government is not any small amount.

The Village Development Committees had performed work worth Rs. 4 Crores so far. 12,000 families had worked and not been paid. Payment for seeds, fertilizers, bricks and other inputs, treads, machines have been pending. All these have been already bought by the Village Committee from the small village traders, the payments due towards these heads have to be made. SEWA intervened and repeatedly requested the Government to rel ease the funds. We made every effort from writing applications, making request, handing over letters personally, running for the meetings, telephones, faxes but nothing helped. We see no hope of receiving payments till today, the doors of many high level people have been closed for us.

As if this was not enough the Government slapped a special audit on SEWA. All our time is being spent on supplying information to this. This was done in-spite of the fact that regular quarterly audits were being conducted by Government appointed auditors and none of these auditors had found anything wrong. Still we have been cooperating with this special audit.

Meanwhile, the 12000 poorest of the poor families are in an extremely difficult situation. They say, " We have not been paid for 6 months work. Now we have no work. We thought we will have guaranteed employment. Instead we have nothing. We have not received payment so we borrow grains from each other. Earlier when there was a guarantee of employment, the shopkeeper would give us credit. Now who would give us on credit! After all we also have some respect! Now we try to avoid the shops. In fact, the shopkeeper also charges us the salary of the person he has kept to recover his loans from us".

"We have to put some food into the stomachs of the children and the old people. We borrow money now at 3 to 10% per month. What can we do? The dreams of eradicating poverty have eluded us! We thought that we would be able to escape this poverty, but now it seems that a poor person's lot is sorrow. There is no work now, and it has not rained, we bought seeds on credit and that is another burden on us. We even have to buy water to drink. Half the people in the village have migrated. We have given away our cattle in charitable asylum for animals, as we have no way to feed them. This is a blow, more severe to us than the earth quake!"

We have never expected this from the government. Are we not included among the five crore people of Gujarat? We request the Government of Gujarat to release the payment for work already done by the poor families immediately and to continue to give employment through the Jeevika project in these difficult times.

For the District Associations: For SEWA:

Ramiben Rabari Namrata Bali President Kutch Craft Association General Secretary, SEWA

Ranbai Rauma Rahima Sheikh President, Banaskantha DWCRA Secretary, SEWA Mahila SEWA Association

Shantiben Kodi Jyoti Mekwan President, Surendranagar, Secretary, SEWA Mahila & Bal Vikas Mandal

SEWA Academy Krishna Bhuvan, Near Hariharanand Ashram, Opp Sakar Two, Town Hall Road, Ellisbridge, Ahmedabad: 380 006. Gujarat, INDIA.

Phone: +91-79-26577115, 26580474 Fax: +91-79-26587086 Web: www.sewaacademy.org Email: