Two gentlemen on the SS Empress of India ship to America in 1893 spent a lot of time together. Young 30 something Vivekananda and not-so-young 50 something Jamshedji Tata. The steel factory in Jamshedpur, TISCO, later to become Tata Steel came as a result of these conversations. Tata Science – Research Institute, later to become Indian Institute of Science at Bengaluru in 1909. Today, it is one of the leading science and research institutes in the world. Conversations cause, trigger actions, transformations, and transitions. We may not see, hear the butterfly fluttering. It is changing the world. For good. A butterfly flutter moment.
In August 1996, Ratan Tata in a personal letter to Narasimha Rao wrote – You and your government put India on the world map in an economic sense and made us part of a global community. Every Indian should owe you a debt of gratitude for the courageous and far-sighted “opening up” of India. I believe personally that your achievements are momentous and outstanding – and they should never be forgotten. An acknowledgment of the butterfly flutters.
Can we continue to grow into butterflies? Can we flutter?
Rural Women. Nurturers, and carers working hard, earning very little. Money, recognition, and due credit. Farmers, farmworkers, off-farm workers, service providers, and petty traders, in addition to being homemakers. Extreme poverty has increased by 50% in the last 20 years amongst rural women. Women experience the impact of poverty more than men. Women’s work is undervalued in informal, and formal markets. A considerable portion of their work is unpaid, or underpaid. The amount of work they put in is not even counted. Even the formally counted work is undervalued. Survival work, life-saving work, life nurturing work, how can this be less ‘valuable’? Am I missing something here?
What is feminization of work, farming? Drudgery; work without access, control on the results of the work, income; slavery, with no alternative or no freedom to choose the work? the ‘head’ in the plate goes elsewhere always?
National Rural Livelihoods Mission, NRLM has gone everywhere, all states, union territories. All districts, all blocks, all GPs, all villages in India, more or less. A Mission that rolled out some 13 years ago. A movement that started some 30 years ago. Today NRLM claims: 9.16M SHGs with 103M women, served by 15M cadre. These Self-help Groups, SHGs follow a simplistic ‘pancha sutra’ – meet, save, lend, repay, record. Some SHGs are accessing Rs.2M loan in one go from banks; and banks are going after them. Layers of activities are being taken up. They have also federated at higher, higher levels. They are also running enterprises. They are taking charge on the ground. On themselves, their families, their groups, their villages, their local governments, their market places. Their lives, their destinations. Maybe – not at the highest quality benchmarked; not at the pace; not ‘all’.
Food. Food Systems. Democratized, local, custom food systems, can they happen? Are we sure that self-sufficient farms, families, villages, locations, clusters, geographies are possible? Are we second guessing? Are rural women the key in this? As champions, entrepreneurs, leaders, mentors, torchbearers. Are they not first? Are they not fast, consistent, reliable? Can we not bank on them?
Yes, we can. If we coexist, keep flowing with carers. In N? sukshmayoga for 7L.
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