The gains from a grain bank

Forty-year-old Mukta Pradhani, a widow in Kotrakund village of Odisha's Koraput district, had about two acres of un-irrigated family land. Her meagre wages as a farm labourer was just not enough to feed her family of five. “Every year I used to borrow money from the sahukar (moneylender) at 50 per cent interest. Sometime ago, I reached a situation where I could not repay. The sahukar sent his men to take away all my harvest. Those were horrible days. There was no food in the house, and my children were starving,” she recalls with anguish.

Reli Khilo in Sisapadar village of Nandapur block is a dongar (hill cultivator) who has applied to the Government for his rights over forestland. But without proper agricultural implements, he struggled to get enough from the land to feed his family of eight. The gram panchayat advised him to take a loan from a sahukar . After taking a loan of four manas (20 kg) of grain, he could not repay it due to a failed harvest. When he requested more time to repay, the sahukar instructed him to send his 11-year-old son to work as bonded labour. S“I spent a whole day outside the sahukar 's door, trying to convince him that I will repay his loan in a year's time. He didn't even look at me. I felt miserable. It was like losing one's self-respect,” Khilo says. Only later did he discover that the local gram panchayat was under the control of the sahukars .

Such stories are not unusual in Koraput, a district in which more than half the population are tribals, most of whom work as agricultural labour. For people already living on the edge, any reversal — a crop failure or a death in the family — can push them into the abyss of debt and bondage; there have even been local media reports of children being sold.

The high levels of indebtedness in these villages provoked Koraput-based social activist Bidyut Mohanty to study the issue closely. He found some villagers repaying the sahukar 10 manas for a loan of 5 manas — an interest rate of 200 per cent — and realised they needed urgent help. Thus was born the idea of a grain bank that would charge affordable interest rates.

About three years ago, Mohanty — who heads the NGO Society for Promoting Rural Education and Development (SPREAD), — convened a meeting of villagers, mainly from the Nandapur and Lamtaput blocks inhabited by tribals displaced during the 1956 construction of the Machkund dam. “At that meeting in Kutumb village, in Balel Gram Panchayat of Lamtaput block, it was unanimously decided that all the households of the village would contribute either paddy or ragi to set up a grain bank. Each household contributed 3-5 kg of paddy and ragi, and our organisation agreed to contribute an equal or greater amount,” Mohanty says.

SHGs, or self-help groups, managed the grain banks. The president or secretary of the local SHG was in charge of distributing the loan and for maintaining accounts and records. Excess stock was sold in the open market and the proceeds invested to earn an interest.

At present, villagers in these two blocks have contributed 33 quintals of paddy and 42.22 quintals of ragi, while SPREAD has contributed 198 and 264 quintals, respectively. During the first year, 520 families received loans totalling 770 kg of paddy and 1,120 kg of ragi. Repayment is always after the harvest, when farmers have disposable income.

SPREAD has set up about 200 grain banks in Koraput. Business for the sahukars has never been worse and Mukta is delighted with this turn of events. “Since the formation of the grain bank, I have not approached the sahukar even once, and I have been able to keep my family fed,” she says.

Khilo is equally relieved, and is extremely enthusiastic about the grain bank. His was among the 38 households in his village that became members of the grain bank and he recently took a loan of five manas of paddy, which he is confident of repaying at the interest rate decided by the village committee. He today looks on the grain bank as a symbol of self-respect and community ownership.

Sonu Khinda — a landless tribal in Kutumb village and a cattle-herder forced to migrate to Andhra Pradesh for a few months every year to buttress his earnings — says the grain bank has brought financial stability to his life. Although he still takes the occasional loan to tide over domestic difficulties, he can breathe easy now as he is no longer at the mercy of a sahukar .

Recognising the positive impact of grain banks in ensuring food security, international agencies like the World Food Programme have helped set up hundreds of grain banks in States like Odisha and Madhya Pradesh, which have seen high levels of malnutrition.

Ultimately, it is about what Khilo describes as “self-respect”. As food activist Sukhram Gadenga, who is associated with SPREAD, put it, “There's no doubt about it, grain banks have helped provide greater autonomy for the tribals in this region.”

© Women's Feature Service

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