The Women of Chindbahar – Moving Ahead

With support from development professionals and information about the various activities under different projects, the women in Chindbahar take up the responsibility of improving their lives, taking charge of projects and interacting with the community and the government officials with ease and confidence

O n the 5 February 2012, I received a call from Laxman Netam, the sachiv of Panchyat Chindbahar Panchayat, inviting me to attend a gram sabha meeting the following day. I went there with Nandini, my colleague in PRADAN, and was happy to see that about 200 villagers had gathered and of these at least 50 per cent of them were women. These women were a part of Self Help Groups (SHGs). The sarpanch, the janpad sadasya and the zila sadasya (the people’s representatives at block & district levels respectively) were in the meeting as well. This was a special gram sabha called to discuss the problem of land and water work through MGNREGA. I was happy that the villagers were taking the initiative to talk about MGNREGA, without any influence from government officials or NGOs.

Having been to the village today and seen the enthusiasm of the villagers, I began to think of our initial days here. Pradyut formed the first SHG, ‘Lal Genda Mahila Swa Sahayata Samooh’, in 2009, and I started working here a year later. Chindbahar is a village in Darbha block in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, which is about 22 km from the district headquarters, Jagdalpur. There are seven hamlets in this village with about 350 households. Around 65 per cent of the population belongs to STs, 20 per cent to SCs, 10 per cent to OBCs and 5 per cent to the general category.