PAKISTAN: Village Organisations Empower

By Zofeen Ebrahim Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, May 26 2006 (IPS) - To passersby, the village of Fazal Talhani, 250 km east of this port city, looks starkly different from neighbouring ones. It has clean homes, safe drinking water, well maintained streets and, most importantly, happy and healthy school-going children.

Once known for desperate poverty and vicious crime, Fazal Talhani in Sanghar district, owes its transformation to the Sindh Agricultural and Forestry Workers Coordinating Organisation (SAFWCO), a civil society group which, in 1986, began a social mobilisation programme by forming village development organisations (VDOs).

To date, SAFWCO has helped form 1,003 (613 male and 390 female) VDOs and created an environment in which grassroots voices can be heard in Sindh province. ”They are experts when it comes to finding solutions to their problems,” says Niaz Hussain Sial, a volunteer who says the key lay in “mobilising them (villagers), though that is a slow and painstaking process”.

In Fazal Talhani, SAFWCO strategy has followed a path of promoting gender empowerment so that educating girls has gained acceptability at one level and the construction of water supply and sanitation systems has brought immense relief to women at another.

Villagers were provided small loans to start micro-enterprises. Once SAFWCO also imparted training to develop leadership capacities, the seeds of change were sown.

For VDO general secretary, Mohammad Anwar, the success at Fazal Talhani is the result of a multi-pronged approach to poverty reduction and a strategy of overall development. ”Now when everyone is healthier and happier we can think of other (social) issues too,” he says optimistically.

For example, it has been made mandatory to get marriages registered and women are continually given awareness lectures on the various clauses of the nikahnama (marriage contract) that they are urged to consider before signing.

But perhaps the biggest change has been on extreme patriarchal mindsets. ”Early marriage was a common phenomenon. Now we will not let our daughters’ hands be given away at birth,” said Anwar.

”We were recently able to cancel a watta satta (an exchange agreement where one family agrees to give their son and daughter in marriage to another family’s daughter and son) with the intervention of the VDO,” says Hanifa, a voluble and spunky village teacher who takes adult literacy classes. She admits, however, that it will be some time before women can take decisions or young girls are permitted to choose their husbands.

In the neighbouring village of Murad Ali Rind, Shahnaz, a VDO member says: ”It was the poverty of our minds, rather than lack of financial resources.”

According to Zulekha, another young VDO member, empowerment of women has meant education for not just the younger female generation but also for adult women who enroll in adult literacy classes. ”Educating girls was unthinkable, even mothers thought it would ruin the minds of their daughters. Not any more.”

Hajiani, 26, was among the first 35 women who enrolled in a female adult literacy course offered by SAFWCO. Just being able to read a little and do simple sums has opened up the world for her. “We sell milk and it’s so much easier, now that I can keep accounts.”

With access to the written word came health education. “We’ve learnt how to pasteurize milk, read the expiry date on medicine bottles, keep food and utensils covered,” said Hajiani. She loves to read the newspaper, especially the captions underneath photographs of popular actresses.

Women, now more assertive, go to the city to get training and attend workshops. “The men were initially sceptical about our leaving the village. They were scared of what other villagers would say. But when they saw the difference training made to us, they were more accepting.”

“Women’s work used to be of no value. A man could be away from home, just wandering about doing nothing, and it didn’t matter. Now there is a noticeable change in our men. They seem to respect us more,” said Hajiani.

Changing patriarchal mindsets may have been one result of the formation of the male VDOs. They have also got the men to take greater initiative in solving their problems.

”We’ve realised we can’t wait for the government to come to our aid, this may mean a long wait, maybe a lifetime,” says Ijaz Ali, the VDO president. In 1986, Murad Ali Rind village with 5,000 acres of agricultural land suffered severe water loss, being at the tail end of the Chhan Babu canal linked to the rapidly depleting River Indus.

For 20 years there was no water although the village had land and manpower. “Many young men had little choice but to join the army or look for jobs outside the village.” Today, six years after they formed the VDO, they have installed 25 hand-pumps that provide water for drinking as well as for farming.

Hazoor Bux, says the VDOs have given them collective strength. “When we go to the electricity department, the officer does not brush us aside anymore. He has little choice but to listen to our grievances.” Sometime ago the villagers had to pool money to get a transformer repaired. When it went out of order a second time, the villagers insisted that the electricity department replace it. “It meant doing a few rounds but we got it done.”

“For far too long we’ve been voting for our leaders hoping they would fulfill their promises. They’ve always let us down. We’ve learnt that we really don’t need them.” So this time around when the feudal lord of the area asks them to vote for his man, chances are the villagers are going to look him in the eye and refuse.

”If you ask me, the best part of having formed this (VDO) platform is that although we may have serious ideological and political differences, when it comes to resolving village issues, we sit together and try to find solutions. We never did that earlier,” says Ghulam Murtaza, a farmer.

Personally too, his life has changed for the better. “I’d taken loan from the wadera (feudal landlord) and the interest was so much that I was just able to manage to pay off the interest while the principal amount remained where it was. Once I got credit from the VDO, I was able to pay off all that I owed.”

Murtaza was also able to get his electricity meter rectified with the help of the VDO. ”Earlier I would just give whatever amount I was charged as it was easier than complaining to the department. It was easier than visiting the electricity department office, as it meant taking leave from work.”

But it is the women that have benefited most. “Because our minds have opened, our women, too, are enjoying a certain amount of freedom. Their mobility has increased and they are forever going for this training or that workshop. Now there are days when there is no one to iron my clothes or make me fresh roti (bread),” Mohammed Khan at Umar Keerio village complained half-jokingly.

”I have noticed they have acquired a new-found confidence. In fact I’d say, there are scores of Benazirs (Bhutto, first woman prime minister of Pakistan and hailing from Sindh) in our village now, challenging the status quo and demanding their rights,” Khan said.