Woman Service Providers to the Fore

From being mere implementers and wage labourers in a traditionally patriarchal society, the women of Koderma have created an identity and space for themselves as farmers and service providers, capable of guiding and hand-holding other women farmers, leading to greater utilization of the land and other resources, and proving that together they can achieve self-sufficiency

Back to Koderma

I joined PRADAN in 2007 as a Development Apprentice at its Koderma project. Six months later I was transferred to the Bokaro project where I worked for five years. My major engagement at Bokaro was to work with SHGs and help promote livelihoods through the Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) approach.

I moved back to Koderma in June 2013. I was surprised by the vibrancy of the SHG members and wondered what had brought about the change in the last five years. I remember that livelihoods had not been the foremost need of the community, especially in Chandwara and Jainagar blocks, and how as a team we had struggled to make it so.

I worked on planning the crop with the women for the kharif season; I found that, unlike earlier, they set themselves a huge target and the crop portfolio was very high. I was struck by the fact that all the Service Providers working in the Clusters were women. And because many of them were not educated, I wondered whether they would be able to deliver the kind of critical interventions that were needed to promote crops. As I began to engage with them, however, I found that they were not only competent to promote crops but had in many ways changed the way we looked at agriculture.