closing remarks on myrada interviews

Tomorrow, July 18, marks the end of our field visits with Myrada SHG groups.

Over the last month we have talked with almost 100 women, who are long-time participants in Myrada self-help groups or sanghas. With the exception of two groups, all of the sanghas are five years or older. The majority of the women that we have spoken with are involved in agriculture, daily labor and small businesses like tailoring and petty shops. Most of the husbands and other family members are also involved in similar trades. We have seen from our initial survey responses the sangha women usually take loans to bolster an existing family business or more often, purchase items like seeds and fertilizers for agricultural purposes.

The number of people who own their own homes and own land is rather significant. However, most landowners have less than ten acres of land, with very few families having landholdings that exceed this amount. Several families own their own home or live with (and in some cases care for) parents and in-laws. The sangha members have often told us that they will eventually inherit these family homes when their parents or in-laws pass away. Often, this property is inherited from the husband’s parents.

We found that people save by purchasing gold and livestock when they had larger sums of money. Often sangha women mentioned that they pooled resources to take a loan out or use the interest on savings to purchase gold or sheep for each woman in the group. Overall however, the savings in sangha is minimal, with women saving only Rs. 10 – 20 weekly, which amounts to about Rs. 40 – 80 in a month. Those women who can afford to save more, usually do so in a post office or a bank. Some women even told us that the way they save money was to lend to others, which is often financed by a loan from the sangha, or other income. While there is the existence (moreso in rural areas) of chit funds, PIGMYs and ROSCAs, they seem to be more common amongst men and people who are not sangha members.

In terms of loan usage, as described above, most people use loans for business and agricultural purposes. We also saw that several parents who sent children for higher education took loans for things like nursing school and technical training. What we did see however, was that there were several cases, where sangha members or their family members have loans from both the sangha and other sources, mainly money lenders and family/friends. Banks seem to offer the best interest rates (Rs. 1/100 and in some cases 80 paise / 100) but more often than not, people would have taken from moneylenders. Most people mentioned that they took from other sources for weddings, sudden illnesses and agricultural purposes. Often, it was because they had an existing sangha loan and still needed more credit for the aforementioned reasons or others.

Most women who have young or adolescent children seem to be educating them till at least SLC (10th grade), which is the equivalent of getting a high school diploma. Education beyond SLC requires additional funding even for government colleges. Students need to pass and write government or private exams to get into pre-university courses. Often, we have heard that children have gotten to SLC and decided not to continue their education because they failed the college exams. Other difficulties in accessing higher education include travel costs and cultural concerns, especially when it comes to young women. Some mothers have mentioned that schooling beyond SLC is the decision of their daughter’s future husband.

However, for the most part, it seems that there is a trend towards completing education at least until SLC. This is in deep contrast to the number of sangha women who are non-literate, having never attended school. Most of their husbands and parents are also predominantly non-literate as well. The generation of children that ranges anywhere between 5 and 22 seem to be more likely to attend and continue with school at least until they are done with their high school diploma, which is a shift from their parent’s generation. Many women have explained that being in the sangha has enlightened them to the benefits of education, namely, economic benefits by way of better jobs. (This includes secure government jobs.) As a result, it seems that several children are also attending technical degree programs that range from teaching certificates to auto mechanics. Many of these children are young women, who are trying to secure good government positions in teaching and on the KSRTC. Several of their children seem to be working in a range of jobs in the larger metropolis of Karnatka like Bangalore.

Overall health does not seem to be a major concern, with only the bout of bird flu impacting family members and communities throughout the survey areas. Otherwise, there were relatively few reports of individuals going to the hospital for physical ailments or sicknesses. However, we did find that several women mentioned that alcoholism is a problem in their communities, and even amongst their own husbands. Aside from legal restrictions there seems to be no medical attention addressing these issues.



Interview Process

The interview process itself has been fairly straightforward. We drive to a location, meet with an RC manager or designated RC (or federation) representative, who then locate the women at a previously designated location. For the most part we have been able to meet sangha members in the home of one woman. Otherwise we meet sangha members at a central location like the local nursery school (anganwadi) building or at the community center. The three women usually arrive together, and observe one another’s interviews. While we tried to emphasize the importance of individual interviews, it is very difficult to find these women completely alone, as even in their homes, there are in-laws, children and grandchildren milling in and out to observe the interviews. Often, the women will help the respondent when she doesn’t know the answer to a question, or hesitates about what to say in response to the translator’s question. Moreover, random villagers, especially children and young men will come to observe anything that transpires during our interview sessions. While at first, it was difficult for our translator to focus on just the interview, after some prompting, he would get the women to focus on the questions and also explain to others that they would have a chance to participate in later parts.

The latter groups that we visited, we only dealt with the three sangha members, and an occasional relative or passerby. However, they did feel more comfortable when their other sangha members were present, during the interview.

I conducted some mini-focus groups by utilizing the times we had when several sangha members would be present for interviews. During these times, we allowed all people to respond to questions in sections 9-11 (community development, drop outs, new members) and the general sangha information. This allowed us to get a cross-section of data from several different members. We found early on that despite asking individual members the same questions, they were giving the same reasons for new members and drop outs. So after a few days, I decided to allow the entire group of women to respond to this section of questions. This also helped in jostling their memories, as each person recalled only one or two pieces of information related to these topics. Most of the women were very clear on details like why people dropped out and how people joined. However, community development was a more difficult section to answer, because they often did not recall what they had done as a sangha and in some cases did not realize that they had participated in community development because they had just simply taken direction from the RC supporter’s suggestions.

We were able to interview three GP members, who were also part of our sangha members, and we can use these three women for mini-case studies. One GP woman in particular was extremely open to answering questions as well as her husband, so we should have some colorful highlights in this section.

Finally, interviewing the representatives did not prove to show that they had any extra or additional information. In many cases, they looked to other, more vocal members for guidance about what had transpired during the years of the group.