Dhoksangavi experiments with self-help groups

Dilip Athavale visits the village to assess the work of Srinivasan Services Trust.

Sunita Pachange sits proudly behind the counter of her small provision store in the cozy village of Dhoksangavi near the buzzing industrial hub of Ranjangaon, 60 km from Pune.

The bubbly, 20-something Sunita managed to start this store from the savings she made while running a telephone booth for the last three years.

Some 20 km away from Dhoksangavi is Golegaon, where Vaishali Chavan is busy cheering up the members of women's self-help groups Ekata, Samata, Namrata and Damini to build up stocks of authentic Maharashtrian snack specialities like kurdai and papdi which will be laid out in the forthcoming Bhimthadi Jatra "" an exhibition cum sale of things produced by women's SHGs "" to be held in Pune mid-December.

Amol Bandal, a commerce graduate and a diploma holder in information technology, is handholding the schoolboys of Dhoksangavi through the nuances of using a personal computer.

There is a common, invisible thread that flows through the three scenes. All of them are initiatives of Srinivasan Services Trust (SST), the philanthropy arm of the Chennai-headquartered TVS Group which has just completed a decade of its existence.

The SST has spearheaded the effort to add value to the life of residents in Dhoksangvi, which is a major source of workers, staff and contractors for Group company Harita Seating Systems.

The company was among the first to commence manufacturing in the industrial estate of Ranjangaon and identified Dhoksangvi as the right location to initiate some social and development projects.

The place lacked proper facilities of schools, roads, drinking water and health. Though the men-folk engaged mainly in agriculture or found jobs in industries in Ranjangaon, women came out as a sizeable human resource.

Says Ashok Joshi, chairman of SST: "We began by explaining the concept of SHGs to the village women and helped them achieve a level of income generation where they could be graded for eligibility to get funds from banks or government organisations."

SST typically intervenes with the initial capital, orientation and training and then monitors the progress of the SHGs to ensure they achieve certain parameters of performance, he elaborates.

This effort of nearly a decade has yielded impressive results as many women from Dhoksangavi now earn close to Rs 2000 every month. There is Chanda Salve who buys fish from the wholesale market at Shirur and sells it locally, Rukmini Pachange who runs a mess for the bachelors working for different factories in Ranjangaon or a group that hires generator set for functions such as weddings.

Pushpalata Bandal, who supervises the work of the 20 SHGs with memberships exceeding 250, says the average earnings of the groups is between Rs 1600 to 2000 per month. The groups have so far mobilised "" and repaid "" close to Rs 90 lakh from Bank of India.

"The income generation programmes have seen the savings of member-women rising from Rs 200 per month to Rs 600 per month, entitling them to bigger amounts of funding," Pushpalata points out.

Vaishali Chavan's Groups in Golegain churn out nearly 200 kg foodstuff every week that have ready buyers in the canteens that feed the industry workers in Ranjangaon.

A more recent development is a computer training centre where Amol Bandal teaches school children how to use a personal computer. There are 11 boys who come to the centre regularly and have picked up introductory software skills, he says.

While these activities, on an individual level, are progressing, SST has also helped in developing common infrastructure such as building of a school block, a resource centre and initiating projects in watershed developments.

"Improvement in the earnings, health and education levels of the villagers is a directly visible impact of the trust's initiatives," Joshi notes, adding that additionally, it firms up the bond between the TVS Group and the local community.

For the villagers, the take home is in the form of the improved success rate in the SSC results recorded by the school, or the fact that one girl student scored 177 out of 200 marks in the state CET and is now doing engineering in a college in Pune.

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Ten years of Srinivasan Services Trust

Srinivasan Services Trust completes a decade of social service this year. Over 11 years it has expanded its project network to 146 villages, across four states. SST according to TVS Motor Company Managing Trustee Venu Srinivasan endeavours to create holistic models of development focusing on uplift of entire communities. The TVS group recently got the Mother Teresa Award for Best Corporate Citizen for "social responsibility beyond the call of duty.'' Its areas of operation are Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh.