The long rope to self-reliance in banana country

G Muniyamma, 55, crinkles her forehead in concentration as her fingers twist the banana fibre ropes around the metal frame of what is to be a fruit basket. Living in Padavedu, a small village in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai district that’s surrounded by mountains and lush green paddy fields, around 170 km from Chennai, she heads a self-help group (SHG).

“I’m the leader of a group that makes ropes from banana fibre,” she says, disclosing that her income is close to ₹20,000 per month. But it wasn’t like this always — her earning today is a phenomenal jump from 17 years ago.

Recalling that period of her life, she says, “I had three young children to take care of with an earning of ₹20 per day. I was unable to feed them three meals a day.”

Life took a turn for the better when the Srinivasan Services Trust (SST), the Corporate Social Responsibility arm of TVS Motors, offered to form a self-help group and train her in banana fibre rope-making. Today, there are over 200 SHGs in this area, which has 29 hamlets and a population of 17,000. They all make rope from waste and together employ over 2,000 women, providing them a regular source of income.

Riches in the backyard

KS Krishnan, Field Director at SST, recalls how the organisation zeroed in on the idea of rope-making for the village’s development after it came across a not-for-profit organisation training rural women in the skill. “It made perfect sense as banana fibre is available in abundance here.”

While paddy is the primary crop in the region, bananas are another major produce, cultivated on nearly 12,183 hectares. After harvest, each year tonnes and tonnes of banana fibre are discarded on the roads or burnt. “Through the initiative we found better ways to manage the waste and provide employment at the same time,” says A Ganeshan, the village development facilitator.

In 2000 the first SHG of 12 women was formed and Muniyamma was selected to undergo training for a week in Bengaluru. She, in turn, trained her group and the women soon went into business after taking small loans.

“Initially the orders were small and so were our earnings,” recalls M Kanchana, an SHG member. But it did not take long for the business to pick up. “My average earnings per day is ₹300 now,” she says. As the enterprise began to flourish, more groups were formed. With the business scaling up, machinery was brought in to reduce the manufacturing time and improve the product line.

“Earlier they made ropes by hand. With machines there is opportunity to innovate,” says Ganeshan. From just fruit baskets initially, the group now makes over 30 products, including purses, bags, file folders, trays and dustbins. “However the demand for such products is still low,” he rues.

The gift of self-respect

The women are busiest between June and March, when they get the maximum orders. The trust helps with both funding through nationalised banks at low interest rates and procuring orders. So far the groups in Padavedu have taken a loan of ₹10 lakh.

But the best part is not just the money, says Kanchana, who is now leading an SHG in the village and has contributed towards her family’s income and the education of her sons. For her it is also the dignity the job gives and the respect she earns from her family. “When our deadline is tight, my entire family gets involved,” she says.

Muniyamma agrees. “After I became the leader it gave me immense self-confidence.” In addition to training women in the village, she has passed on her skill to women in Salem, Madurai and Tirunelveli.

She blushes as her colleagues speak of her recent award — the ‘Woman Exemplar Award for Micro Enterprises’ that she received from the Confederation of Indian Industry. “All this would not have happened had I not taken that first step,” she says.

The writer visited the development project in Tiruvannamalai at the invitation of the Srinivasan Services Trust

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