Indian Co-operative Network for Women
An Inclusive Micro-loan Process of Working Women’s Forum (India)
Dy. Jaya Arunachalam
President
Indian Co-operative Network for Women
Working Women’s Forum (India)
The Co-operative concept in the west owes its origin to the effort of the great visionary of Europe, Mr. Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffesen from Germany. His innovation of self-help and self-management process among the workers has enhanced their dignity of labour. His lifetime mission was to propagate the concept of common ownership to counter social liequalities. Even after several generations, the ideology of this eminent genius Mr. Raiffesen, continues and is a household name worldwide transcending all kinds of barriers.
A similar situation arose in India that warranted the initiation of co-operative movement at a time when the country was passing through difficult times around freedom struggle i.e. early 20th century. The founding fathers of the nation particularly Shri Vaikunth Mehtaji along with other architects of modern India closely committed themselves to this concept of co-operatives to be the ideal vehicle for social development/viable strategy to adopt social development process to help the exploitated masses after the colonial rule.
Sri. Vaikunth Mehtaji was himself closely associated with this initiation of co-operative ventures around early 20th century. During that time several co-operative ventures slowly gained ground. Also, co-operatives helped to facilitate some kind of social development among rural masses who suffered in poverty/ squalor during the postcolonial time in India.
It is no exaggeration to say, that poverty has direct effect on the abysmal status of poor men/women even today in India. Therefore, the spirit of this co-operation was considered as an innovative instrument in the post colonial days that could do away with all kinds of discrimination such as rich/poor, particularly in rural areas and expected that this will pave way for sound/healthy human development.
Unfortunately the ideology of the visionaries was marred in India as the system slowly gave place to state control and such intervention in co-operatives weakened their progress and became in impediment to the direct community participation in the economic development. This so because the resources that were to be handled by cooperators in rural areas were public money, where literacy level was very low and as such, control is the only way to safeguard people’s resources.
However, in the recent times since the emergence of Worldwide Women’s Movement in 1975 several grassroot women’s initiated towards social change process. So women, too, were able to actively participate in co-operatives, a concept that was almost rare until the 70s in India. Despite being hardworking workforce, poverty affected women more than men bearing the drudgery of work place and home.
One such innoviative experiment initated is Working Women’s Forum (India) in the year 1978 in the urban slums of Chennai city. Though WWF was initiated as a reverberation of the worldwide women’s movement, it was also a necessity as WWF experienced a similar as WWF experienced a similar situation as Mr. Raiffeisen had gone through generations as WWF was dealing with women workers at the grassroots.
The paragraphs given below will describe how a large number of poor women relegated and depended on what in general is known as informal options of work i.e. accept any work options, suffering in abject poverty and indebtedness. A major component of India’s workforce, the women went through lot of struggles, being unorganized, unskilled/non-technical in nature. Their work is undervalued/underestimated despite these women constitute 89% of India’s workforce.
Left with no permanent employer they continue to be an easy target for exploitation by middle men/whole sale contractors and buyers. The temporary nature of their work results in their invisibility in the statistical terms that often results in their being overlooked by government policies and welfare benefits. Women in this sector shouldered dual burden of contributing to the family income also taking complete responsibility for the home/children.
Economic exploitation/social oppression that women suffered called for a new model of development/intervention based on women innate wisdom/ response to help them. This model existed on the indigenous methodologies utilizing local modes of communication.
The Working Women’s Forum (India) facilitated thus an inclusive and an equitable model based on women centered development. It also rejected a piece meal approach to the problems faced by women and based its services on a holistic perception with gender sensitivity, projected the real portrayal of women’s role as economic producers, home managers and community managers.
WWF facilitates women in extreme poverty, concentrated on an organized platform for them to fight for their rights and entitlements, access to credit, education, healthcare, training/orientation (both for skills and empowerment) towards promoting a social and financial independence among them to enhance social status. We should say WWF matched all the common objectives of millennium development goals of the United Nations. Taking responsibilities to organize these poor women around their own households, markets, communities and neighbourhoods. The Forum initiated its maiden endeavour in the year 1978 with 800 women, now a social movement of 10,90,765 women in three southern states in India spread over 3644 villages and 2256 slums in 14 branches.
The Forum’s success lies in its innovative attempts, as it offered to integrate in the poor women at all levels in its institutional framework, also utilized them as an effective delivery mechanism to reach other poor women extensively, be it in rural poorer segments or in the urban slums. To handle credit transaction and enhance the social/financial independence of poor women WWF promoted a separate wing known as Indian Co-operative Network for Women, as a federally registered co-operative.
ICNW is an inclusive financial process and its main task is to provide low interest loan encouraging poor women entrepreneurship and strengthen their economic roles.
The primary objective were promoting leadership from below, maintain grassroot character of the institution eliminating the domination of elites and help grassroot women not only to occupy important position in the Board but also to be part of decision making process. Such integration of the poor at all levels not only facilitated the outreach but also maximized their participation in total, facilitated democratic functioning of the co-operative and its smooth management. It is this bottom-up approach that has ensured the formulation/ implementation of field oriented credit policies specifically tailor-made to cater to the needs of the poor.
Thus, the success of ICNW experiment proved that the poor are indeed creditworthy and bankable and when provided equal opportunities, they not only managed their enterprises but can create assets for themselves and improve their own quality of lives. By effecting social change process ICNW demonstrated that the co-operative has achieved financial viability, further proving that credit could be used as an effective procursor to social change process. The credit programme of ICNW 5today reaches over 4,81,719 poor entrepreneurs effecting nearly 1696.94 million rupees accomplishing about 98.85% recovery rate in the urban slums/rural areas.
One example of how the programme of WWF/ICNW became of WWF/ ICNW became quite important for the central government, particularly, was that it was called to testify and share the experience of WWF/ICNW. The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector invited the President WWF on 13th March 2006. Since the Commission desired that such experiences would facilitate and strengthen the efforts in policy formulation for a New Social Security Bill that is pending in the Parliament.
Following the presentation, the commission in its letter stated that they were highly impressed by the outstanding work being done by WWF/ICNW and indicated their desire that WWF should join hands with the commission in marking a feasibility study about the weavers, one from the North i.e. Varanasi and another, from the South in Kanchipuram.
Hence, a study was taken up on the comparative trade aspects of Kanchipuram and Varanasi weavers as desired by the commission. In addition to this an exchange programme was organised between the two weavers to learn the successful aspects of trade of the Kanchipuram weavers by the Varanasi weavers. To share their experiences in weaving and observe the gradual progress of Kanchipuram weavers and find out the possibility of its replication in Varanasi, the weavers visited nearly 50 to 100 houses of Kanchipuram weavers. There was an exchange/sharing of information programme of the Varanasi and Kanchipuram weavers. Towards the end of the discussion it was revealed that the Varanasi weavers were eager to revive their trade again and make their venture successful.
Further, WWF’s has a strong Reproductive Health Care programme that keenly concentrates on strengthening the productive role of poor women where these workers face a situation where even some basic healthcare is denied. The programme has built a strong or network of health cadres in slum/ village neighbourghoods who constantly raise the consciousness of the poor women on their reproductive rights and other health matters (including HIV/AIDS).
Crucial to the programme was enhancement of the decision-making power of these women regarding their reproductive rights i.e. with reference to number of children and contraceptive choices. The programme impacted nearly 16,18,842 families (1.5 million) accomplishing 72% couple protection rate in the poorest communities, providing employment to 960 grassroots health cadres spread out to 720 slums and 340 villages. Networking with several insurance companies, WWF has evolved a comprehensive social security programme for its member such as life insurance, health insurance, disability insurance and accident insurance. The initiation of a social security programme for poor women impacted, maternity benefits (upto two children) and insurance cover to over 7,72,891 women for life, disability and health aspects.
Combining with the co-operative effort of ICNW, the parent body i.e. WWF slowly initiated a trade union in the name National Union of Working Women of that facilitates poor women in their struggle to fight for labour, land and housing rights of poor working women/their families. Equally, union’s concern is to fight other human rights issues like female feticides, female infanticides, child prostitution and child labour that affects the poor on daily basis, as all the social evils have close connection to poverty.
The crisis management in WWF is handled with great care. To drive home the point, an example of crisis management handled both internally and externally in WWF/ICNW with regard to the trunami killer wave that hit the Marina coast of Chennai, the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu and fees Coastal areas of Andhra Pradesh on December 26th 2004 where nearly 2000 members of WWF were worst affected in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh can be cited.
WWF/ICNW quickly volunteered to organize one day counseling, as advocacy workshop, the representatives of the fishing families, who were in trauma and gave them expert advice through oceanography experts and marine engineers, assuring that the tsunami doesn’t come as often but only in 50 to 80 years.
The counseling also facilitated WWF/ICNW for a need assessment for the financial assistance to many of them and provisions towards fishing infrastructure, housing needs, built new houses and repair of the damaged houses, children’s educational need and constructed a fish market for the fishing community in Narsapur.
Programme likes Annual Planning Meetings, problem solving training collective effort of visual material production programmes, dissemination of such informations in small workshops in all the service areas are common phenomenon in WWF annually as a stimulation exercises for the field staff. Such activities helped to maintain solid grassroots character of the organization inspite of the organization’s phenomenal growth for over three decades.
The current liberalization and economic restructuring does not benefit the poor in India as elsewhere, with 41% living below poverty line. WWF a future oriented multi-pronged initiative and a pro-poor strategy helps the Indian poor women to face the onslaught of globalization. As a consolidation process, WWF’s initiative is to transfer this strategy of pro-poor advocacy to other groups through orientation. This is an ongoing process. Large number of groups from India/Foreign universities, researchers, NGO groups, government officials do visit WWF, both for orientation and exposure visits.
The success of WWF/ICNW experiment demonstrates that such financial inclusive process, flexible need based programmes are specially devised effectively with people participation at all levels. Reasonable levels of monitoring both internally and externally with constant checks and balances on the proper utilization of funds and resources are some of the strategies that WWF/ICNW adopted in overcoming inherent inequalities and unleashing women’s productive capacity. This system has not only worked but also infused confidence among the clients, raised the standard of their living, upholding human dignity, helped redistribution of resources towards ensuring social justice and positive social change.
Thus WWF believes in moving along a transitional path between market responses and social demands with an imperative gender focus. This could be achieved if micro finance practitioners or co-operators worldwide follow an inclusive financial process.
| AREA CO VERED UNDER THE WORKING WOMEN’S FORUM (INDIA) |
No. of Members (Cumulative) 10,90,765
No. of Branches 14
Villages 3,644
Slums 2,256
Social Security Coverage of Women (cumulative) 7,72,891
Reproductive Health Coverage 16,18,842
| AS A LEGALLY REGISTERED MICRO FINANCE INSTITUTION ICNW AS ON |
Out reach in Credit 4,81,719
Loan Portfolio (Rs.) 1696.94 Million
No. of Loans 14,54,007
Share Capital 70.42 Million
Savings:
Member’s Savings 119.23 Million
Fixed Deposit of Members 48.57 Million
Working Capital 56.53 Million
Outstanding Portfolio 111.54 Million
Financial Self-sufficiency 108%
Operational Self sufficiency 103%
% of women clients 100%
% of Rural Clients 68.09%
% of Urban Clients 31.91%
On Lending Interest Rate 21% on declining balance
Avg. Repayment Period 12 Months
Cumulative Repayment Rate 98.85%
Default Rate 1.15%
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