[Even the reports of the shortcomings seem honest. It seems like an occasion for one and half cheers]
Financial Times; May 02, 2003
ASIA-PACIFIC: Hopes pinned on poor women to alter economic landscape of village India
By Edward Luce
Life will never be quite the same for the men of Muktipad village in the southern Indian state of AndhraPradesh. Theirwives and daughters, who for generations stayed indoors without voice or influence, now dominate the village square.
The same is happening across thousands of villages in the 80m-strong state of Andhra Pradesh. In a country where lower caste women are locked out of decision- making, the government of Andhra Pradesh is sponsoring a social revolution.
Chandrababu Naidu, the state's charismatic chief minister better known for his ability to persuade Microsoft and other IT companies to invest, says he aims to turn Andhra Pradesh upside down.
The World Bank, which recently provided a second $150m (£94m) loan for a programme aimed at reducing poverty by removing obstacles to poor households raising their income, is betting that Mr Naidu is right.
"If we do not give power to women, then we can forget about developing India," Mr Naidu told the Financial Times.
"Women are the key to eradicating poverty."
The men of Muktipad - about 120km from Hyderabad, the state capital - still appear shell-shocked. At first - when the programme started three years ago - they forbade their wives to attend the self-help groups and co-operative societies that started mushrooming in the village.
But as their illiterate wives grew in confidence, their husbands' leverage started to wane.
"Our husbands used to get drunk every night and beat us up and we had no one to talk to," said Ramu Lamma, president of the area's women's group. "Now they are beginning to see the benefits of supporting this. All our daughters now attend school."
Under the programme, it is the beneficiaries who determine the priorities. This in itself is something of a revolution in a country where bureaucrats have traditionally handed out assistance from on high.
Even where corruption was absent, it was usually the wealthy households - and the men who headed them - to which the benefits flowed. This project is intended to short- circuit that problem.
"Development projects so often bypass the people they are supposed to target," said Michael Carter, India country director of the World Bank. "What is so radical is that the intended targets are the ones who are in control."
Andhra Pradesh now has 450,000 women's self-help groups covering 8m impoverished women. The programme works by women forming groups and raising some money, then getting grants or loans from the government to fund specific projects that the groups decide on themselves.
Far from sitting around discussing "empowerment" or "community mobilisation" as economists might have them do, the groups are altering the economic landscape of some of the poorest villages in the world.
For example, the women's groups have set up their own thrift societies that lend money to farmers at much lower rates than India's banks - which generally avoid extending credit to the poor. They have also set up residential schools for former child labourers - including indentured children, about 100,000 of whom have been prised from their owners.
And they have banded together to cut out the middlemen and traders who make life a misery for most of India's farmers - still two-thirds of the country's 1bn population.
Such measures have enabled poor farmers to sell their commodities at the true market value as well as buying seeds and other inputs at lower prices. In the six districts where the programme is firmly rooted, rural incomes have risen sharply.
"You can increase the average poor household's earnings from 9,000 rupees a year ($190, ?170, £120) to 24,000 rupees simply by disseminating accurate information," said Vijay Kumar, who heads the scheme. "That is why husbands are not beating their wives quite so often."
The programme also confronts caste differences head-on - India's other great taboo. By selecting only poor and lower-caste women and ensuring that it is the entire village that participates in identifying them, it has brought into the open issues that were almost never discussed in public. The programme is called Velugu - or "light" in the local language.
Naturally, the list of disgruntled upper caste men, commodity traders and disoriented husbands is growing. But for the time being they appear unable to challenge a project to which Mr Naidu is so strongly committed.
They are also up against a 2,500 cadre of "young professionals" who have been trained to enable the women to do what they are doing. Unlike the bureaucrats, "young professionals" often sleep in the houses of the poor and eat food from their plates. Other barriers are also starting to break down.
"We have upper caste women in our group - they are also poor," says the treasurer of one thrift society in the district of Ranga Reddy. "They eat with us and we find we have so much in common. Before they would not even look at us."
Mr Naidu also has his critics, many of whom dismiss this as electoral engineering. Others warn that it takes more than one project to overcome caste barriers and male domination. But in a country where bureaucratic indifference is an intellectual art-form, Mr Naidu's initiative strikes a very different chord.
"My opponents say I am trying to win the next election," said Mr Naidu. "Of course I am, and I will win because all the women will vote for me."