Penned by Board Member, Ms. Alo Pal
*Please note: The names mentioned in this blog have been altered to maintain privacy*
Ragini dropped out of school after her 8th. She worked as an agricultural labourer from the age of 14. She got married, and had two children in quick succession. Her husband is into tailoring on a daily wage basis. He took up painting work as an additional income source but had to give it up after a while due to severe allergies and wheezing. Ragini worked as an hourly maid in two houses to contribute to the family income.
My automatic assumption was that her two children were part of our Back to School (BTS) program – but no. This couple had put their children through school. The older son has completed his BBA in Tourism from Tagore Arts College (TAC) and is now looking for a job, while the younger son is in his first year at TAC pursuing Chemistry. He intends to complete his Master’s, pursue research, and complete a PhD.
When her children were little, Ragini and two of her friends decided to make better use of their time, and in 2009, the three of them undertook a professional course in tailoring. The course cost them 1,000 rupees a month. Ragini’s husband paid for her training. Upon completion, she purchased a second-hand machine in instalments and started her tailoring business.
Her husband, a regular consumer of alcohol, meanwhile had fallen sick, and an angioplasty was recommended. Thanks to the Ayushman Bharat scheme, they got the Ayushman Card for their family from a NET centre, and an angioplasty was performed on her husband at no personal cost at all. We need to make a significant note here of cases in the past where Sharana had to arrange for significant amounts of funds for major heart surgeries for our beneficiaries. The Ayushman Bharat scheme is a massive help for expensive and critical medical interventions for BPL families. Beyond the immediate meeting of costs, the alleviation of the enormous burden of mental stress and agony for beneficiaries who would otherwise have watched their dear ones perish due to a lack of resources for serious illnesses is incalculable.
Meanwhile, for 14 years, Ragini continued to work two shifts as a housemaid while running her tailoring business with the second-hand machine. Already in debt, having taken loans to put her children through college, Ragini was looking to expand her business with a power machine but could not come up with the capital. That is when she came to know about Sharana and our SEP program because her son was enrolled in our Digital Lab course. She attended two women’s group meetings and was given a loan of 20,000 rupees. She added another 4,500 rupees and bought a power machine. The beauty and validation of our SEP program are in naturally witnessing not only an almost immediate financial benefit from the business loan, but also a significantly enhanced quality of life. And these aren’t entitled observations of the privileged talking about quality time.
Ragini beams joyously when she tells me she is not only able to do more work and has stopped her second shift as a housemaid, but she also loves the fact that she can spend more time with her recuperating husband and have more meaningful interactions with her grown-up sons. Her entrepreneurial zeal, however, doesn’t stop here. She now wants to enter the more lucrative and high-demand designer tailoring market, which involves embellishments to garments in addition to stitching.
Ragini is a model case study of a successful SEP loan initiative. But while making my initial notes on her profile, I realised the number of families I’ve written about, who, with similar incomes and struggles, needed Sharana’s help to see their children through school. However, Ragini and her husband considered the education of their children their primary responsibility as parents. They incurred debt, put two children through college, and instilled the aspiration in one to not only pursue a Master’s in Chemistry but also aim for research and a PhD. Most remarkable was her decision, along with her friends, to skill themselves in tailoring by enrolling in a proper professional course. But most heartening of all is to witness once again, in such close quarters, the willingness of our women to work extremely hard and take care of their families with a sense of selfless, loyal responsibility.
