An article with a few examples of womens self help groups that have arisen in Kalinganagar Industrial Estate Orissa amidst all the volatility regarding the TATA STEEL project .

 

It is interesting to note the reactions of the displaced people for the Tata Steel project at Kalinganagar when they come into the Transition camps of the Tata Parivar from their villages. Transit camps are temporary shelters provided by the company to stay in while the displaced people utilize the money given to them for making new homes in modern, well planned out colonies with all basic civic necessities arranged for. Most people come in with a feeling of shock and some even completely numb, devoid of any emotions. Camp managers and psychologists are involved in trying to facilitate the mental transition towards normalcy again. People are often lost in thought about their past lives in their villages before they were displaced, working at their farms, shops, rearing animals, their society in the village and other aspects of their life.
 
With the aid of counselors and fellow displaced people who have opened up to the idea of positive change, these people soon start getting enthused by the vista of new opportunities that present themselves in form of availability of education for their children, healthcare for the whole family and a higher standard of living. What is radical for many of the women hailing from the displaced families is the skill development programs and opportunity to develop self help groups that these women can participate in, to go on to make efficient profit making business units. It must be noted that most of the displaced families hail from the backward segments of society both in opportunity and mindset, wherein women are not always encouraged to earn for the family let alone start their own business.

 
This is where it gets really interesting, on one side there is the whole issue about the ethicalness of indigenous people being made to adopt a more developed lifestyle at the cost of their ancient social ways of life. Conversely, there are a lot of people awed by the vast new opportunities available, certainly the women who suddenly find themselves empowered with their newly trained skills and opportunity to make successful business work. Maybe some of them always had the potential to do much more with their lives but being in a certain kind of society with its norms never made them realize that they could be so much more.
 
The existing activities of such women's self help groups from the Tata Parivar include, poultry units, stitching units, a pickle making unit,a phenyl making unit, mushroom cultivation units and an ethnic craft unit having a trainer from Raghu Rajpur near Puri involved in making 'Saura' wall paintings and Stone carving artifacts.A few cases are of exceptionally motivated people like for example Sanju Mohanto from the Tata parivar colony at Sansilo. She along with the help of her husband Sahadev Mohanto, runs 2 poultry sheds of 300 sq feet each and an average profit of Rs. 8000 per cycle. The devotion she has for her business is so high that she calls up her skill trainer if she notices any unexpected symptoms shown by the chicken even if its late at night!
 
The self help group called Dibyajyoti is involved in making pickles and sauces which are branded and sold in bottles.The interesting thing about the 12 women who are a part of this self help group is that though their gross profit for the year has been around Rs40,000, they actually take no part of the profit home as they are about to clear off the loan they had taken for the business with the current profits.They would like to enjoy the full profits made henceforth. The women in such self help groups usually have a log of individual efforts towards production and accordingly the profits are divided.
 
The case of Maa Mangala Self help group involved in making 'badi' is interesting. It has become too dependant on the help that comes from the company's Resettlement and Rehabilitation program and is momentarily faltering to take bold new steps on its own. Under the leadership of its president Puspalata Patra it is looking at becoming stronger by its own efforts.Swarnalaxmi self help group involved in stitching clothes has good sales catering to children requiring school uniforms having made 1862 sets in the 2009 alone. Even though a few of the women in the group were involved in selling rice grains at the village markets before displacment, majority of them were involved in no income generating activity. The names of Minati Hembram and Shantilata Banra deserve special mention as they were facilitated by the Tata Parivar's Resettlement and Rehabilitation team to get training from the National Youth Project in the field of fashion designing. Now they are working at Chennai in a noted fashion garments manufacturing house on probationary training.
 
Displacement- has been good or bad is a debatable topic, but the fact that displacement has brought about so much opportunity for the above mentioned women cannot be denied. What these women would have been doing had they not been a part of this specific Resettlement and Rehabilitation program is anyone guess. But one thing is for sure, Change, is not always bad.