‘Do not depend on doles’

MISHRA

Want food on your table? A roof over your head? Clothes on your back? Stop depending on the government and become your own hero.

Sage advice from Nileema Mishra, 39, of India, this year’s recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership.

It’s a piece of advice that can be applied anywhere, including poor communities in the Philippines, Mishra said.

“They should trust themselves. They should come together. They should not quit,” she said.

As early as her teen years, Mishra has spent her life helping the poor of her home village of Bahadarpur in Maharashtra, India, to help themselves.

Eleven years after Mishra established the nongovernment organization Bhagini Nivedita Gramin Vigyan Niketan (Sister Nivedita Rural Science Center) in Bahadarpur, she continues to prove that the impoverished and the marginalized could be self-sufficient.

The center, in particular, makes the village women breadwinners of their family by organizing them into an association producing export-quality food and quilts.

It also serves as a microcredit facility the community can tap into as an alternative to government doles and loan sharks.

The center has also organized a cooperative of farmers, mostly males, to pool their resources from which they can take out loans.

Haunting poverty

Mishra points out that in the end, the villagers themselves are their own heroes. She cites as her greatest accomplishment her community’s readiness to improve themselves.

“We didn’t go to mobilize them. Nothing. We just started the work and they just came to us and started working,” she said in an interview at the weekend at Ramon Magsaysay Center.

Although born to a middle class family, the Bahadarpur that Mishra grew up in was beset with poverty that haunted her even as a child.

“Growing up, I saw the poverty around me,” she said. She narrated how her mother would feed and give employment to around 40 old women, who otherwise would only find steady income as house cleaners and blue-collar workers for no more than four months at a time.

‘My life is for them’

Mishra once overheard one of her mother’s charges saying that due to hunger, she would tie a towel around her waist just so she could get some sleep.

She also saw a house so small the widowed owner “could not even splay her legs.”

Mishra recalled a time when the conditions became so bad in Maharashtra that some farmers committed suicide.

These were stark realities the young Mishra could not turn away from. At 13, she decided she would not marry and, instead, would dedicate her life to helping her community.

“I decided I cannot just look at a regular life. I’m not interested in clothing production. I’m not interested in having a family,” Mishra said.

“Day and night, I thought of the starving people. I thought ‘I can just live for these people.’ My life is for them only.”

Prey to loan sharks

After earning her master’s degree in clinical psychology, she went back to her home village to put up the center and invest all she learned into empowering her community.

Lack of money was the crux of her village’s problem. “I have seen that the people worked hard, but because they had no money, they would borrow from moneylenders with interest rates that were too high,” she said.

This pushed the villagers deeper into poverty. What they earned went to paying the loan sharks. Families would lose their land and properties just to pay up.

“They needed low interest rates and they needed money at the right time,” Mishra said.

It also struck her that everyone in the community needed to contribute to generate income—even the housewives. Putting up a legitimate center made otherwise conservative families and women eager to go to work.

“Before we started the work, if the woman wanted to go somewhere outside, they had to ask their family for permission,” Mishra said.

“Now it’s easy for them to come out of the house because they’re not doing anything bad. They don’t worry because they know she’s doing something for the community.”

Handouts

She said the age-old dependence on the government only caused setbacks. Though Mishra recognized that the government was doing its best, she believed that the regulations and limitations it imposed only held the people back.

“The policies remain the same but the everyday situation and people’s demands become different,” Mishra said.

For example, a government dole of a cow per farmer would only work for six months because after that, the cow stopped giving milk. But policies wouldn’t allow for another cow. And the farmers would end up spending more taking care of the animal.

“If you take government money, you have to listen to them. They will say, ‘Do this in this certain period,’” Mishra said, adding such an approach had no regard for “people’s emotions.”

Instead, Mishra would ask the villagers themselves for “need-responsive solutions.”

Thus, if two cows were needed at once, Mishra’s center would facilitate the acquisition of capital through funding agencies and other NGOs—money which the villagers would have to pay back.

System works

Under that system, the village was able to arrange for the building of an irrigation system that helped the farmers through a period of sparse rainfall. While other villages’ crops would only be ankle-high, those of Bahadarpur’s went up to the knees, Mishra said.

With the money they earned, the villagers paid the center or their respective associations back. The rural science center’s microcredit program has shelled out around $5 million in loans, with a 100 percent recovery rate.

It was also that system that enabled those who lost their lands to loan sharks to get the lands back.

What about the widow who couldn’t even spread her legs inside her shanty? “She has a big house now, like this,” Mishra said, pointing to the spacious receiving room of Ramon Magsaysay Center.

Gradually, “the change was really from them,” Mishra said. “They’re more confident now. They don’t need to go to politicians to request for everything … They have some hope now for a better future.”

Purpose-driven zeal

In choosing Mishra for the leadership award, the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation cited “her purpose-driven zeal to work tirelessly with villagers in Maharashtra, organizing them to successfully address both their aspirations and their adversities through collective action and heightened confidence in their potential to improve their own lives.”

Mishra was grateful for the recognition.

“We were out of the media spotlight. We were just working. We never realized people from another country appreciated us and were watching us. It was shocking!” she said.

Now more villages are seeking to join Mishra’s center, on top of the 200 villages in Maharashtra it has already reached out to.

“I never felt tired, never felt frustrated,” Mishra said. “Every day, many people are coming to us with many problems. This life is not even enough for me to help them. If there is rebirth, I would give my rebirth for the community.”