Ranchi Field Visits, Day 1

Today at 6:45 in the morning, Helen and I left for Ranchi! Ranchi is Jharkhand’s capital, and it’s thecity that both Helen and I flew into to come to Hazaribag. NBJK has an office in Ranchi that is (at least in some ways) much more comfortable and luxurious than the Hazaribag office. Today, we spent the morning doing field visits to some of NBJK’s projects here.

The projects we visited were microcredit Self-Help Groups (SHGs) that also receive loans for housing improvement, and a hygiene and sanitation program supported by Water Aid, U.K. The SHG consisted of about 15 women in a slum near the heart of Ranchi. The group had been together since 2005, and the women in it have been saving about 5 rupees per week in addition to their borrowing activities. Some of them now have quite sizeable savings.

The SHGs are designed to eventually become independent. The interest that borrowers pay on their loans goes into a group fund, which eventually becomes big enough to fund the loans to the SHG members. To qualify for aid from NBJK to form a group, the group needs 15-20 members, generally all women, and the members must all be married (to reduce issues of migration while holding loans). Through Oak Foundation, SHG members can also apply for loans to make improvements to their homes, and one of the women showed us the recent construction she had done at her house.

That same women told us about how she had no income-generating activities prior to joining the SHG. She took her first loan and used it to start a TV cover business, in which she fabricates TV covers to sell in the market. She started with local materials and selling in the local market, but as her business has expanded, she has started getting materials from Delhi and selling her products in other states. She has sizeable savings, a much-improved shelter, and a comfortable income, thanks to the Grameen-model micro lending that NBJK has supported.

Next we visited a Slum Development Committee (SDC) which receives aid from Water Aid, U.K. to make hygiene and sanitation improvements to the slum. This slum had received funds for several drains and subsidies for residents  to build toilets in their homes. At the start of the project, none of the households (there are about 70) had toilets, and now almost 100% have them.

At this meeting, several of the women brought children in with them, and one woman had a baby who was one of the cutest babies I’ve ever seen. Helen and I took a picture with us sitting with the women, and in the second of those photos, I was completely distracted by huge brown eyes looking at me and tiny hands on my arm. Awwwwww. I’ll see if I can take it from her later.

We then went to another SDC meeting, which was in a very different slum that consists of about 100 households. The first slum was very crowded with narrow streets, few trees, mud everywhere, and a river of sewage running through it (I think it’s an actual river that the slum was built around, that has now been so polluted by waste that the water is black). It broke my heart to see children playing and bathing in that water. The second slum was much more reminiscent of a farm. There were animals everywhere (particularly ducks, which I haven’t seen much in Hazaribag), lots of trees and shade, and much more open space. The second slum had similar progress and similar issues to the first, except that they had also built a soak pit.

A soak pit, as I learned from Anand at breakfast this morning, is sort of like a well, but the opposite. It’s a pit lined with sand and bricks, but instead of taking water out of it to drink, you put wastewater into it. This prevents your household wastewater from creating a swamp on your property, it helps filter contaminants from it, and it helps refresh the groundwater supply.

After lunch I think we’re talking to a tribal development council, and then our agenda is blank. Tomorrow we have more field visits planned, and then a trip to the zoo! Funny story: In Hindi, J and Z are the same sound (like L and R in Japanese, I guess), so it took me a while to understand Girija when we were in the car this morning. He pointed out the window and said, “That is the Jew! Would you like to go to the Jew?” I asked what he’d said, and he repeated, “The Jew! The Jew!” It took a few minutes for me to get “zoo” from “Jew,” but I got it eventually.