Kakkengad Farmers' Club: Designing their own lifejackets

The unique debt swapping scheme pilot tested by NMGB, through its Kakkayangad branch and the Farmers Club promoted by it in association with DDM, NABARD, has saved the lives of many debt ridden farmers from the clutches of usurious money lenders. To prevent these farmers from falling back on the money lenders again, NMGB, Farmers Club and NABARD partnered together to work out a suitable strategies. One of the strategies worked out was to provide skill training on some income generating activities. As a first step in this direction, a eight week long skill training programme on tailoring & garment making was sanctioned by NABARD to NMGB.

Twenty poor rural women, having an aptitude towards tailoring & garment making, from amongst the beneficiaries of the scheme and their dependents were carefully selected through proper screening by a selection committee consisting of DDM, NABARD, LDM and representative of NMGB.

The eight week long training programme focussed on providing skill training on cutting and stitching of various items like skirts, churidars, petty coats, blouse, school uniform, nighties etc. The training curriculum included both theory and practicals. Besides, inputs on achievement motivation, personality development, communication skills, entrepreunership development, accounting, marketing etc were also given. The services of an experienced master trainer was utilised for the skill training and subject experts were engaged for sessions on soft skills. The training programme was organised by the Farmers Club under the overall supervision of NMGB.

An impact evaluation of the training programme carried out by NABARD one year after the training revealed that ten fifty per cent of the trained women are already working as wage earners in some garment making units while the remaining are undertaking the job at home. Some have plans to set up own units after gaining enough experience on the job. A few are exploring the possibility of setting up a common production unit as a joint venture. NMGB came forward to provide loans to the trained women for purchasing sewing machines while some availed loans from their SHGs.

Before undergoing training, none of the beneficiaries had any independent earning capacity and were dependent on the income of their husband/family. After the training they were able to earn a reasonable amount which helped to supplement their family income. The study revealed that the daily income earned by those who are working as wage earners varied from Rs. 50 to Rs. 100 per day while that of those who doing self employment was in the range of Rs 30 to Rs.70 per day.

All the trained women exhibited a high level of confidence and they felt that the training on soft skills like personality development, communication skills, achievement motivation etc helped them to gain confidence to take up all challenges in life boldly. The beneficiaries felt that these inputs made a sea change in their personality.

The training intervention took the debt swap scheme implemented by NMGB in partnership with the Farmers Club promoted by it and NABARD to its logical conclusion by providing an opportunity to the debt ridden rural families to come out of their debt trap permanently through sustained income generation opportunities facilitated by capacity building efforts. This was reflected in the expression of sincere gratitude by some of the beneficiaries of the training programme.

Exuding confidence, Smt Geetha, one of the beneficiaries, said, “ now I am able to supplement the income of my husband and can also save some money for the rainy day”. Tears of joy flowed from the eyes of Smt. Sudharma when she said “ thanks to NABARD, now I am able to give some pocket money to my son who is pursuing his engineering degree”. Indeed words of gratitude coming from their inner hearts. NABARD feels proud of being a humble partner in this endeavour which helped these poor women to design their own life jackets to ward off from debt traps.

Article by Mr. P A Premkumar, AGM, Nabard

A photo from our Tailoring Class Inauguration