Garo Hills (Meghalaya) - Self Help Groups

This post neither concerns Mizoram nor Conservation Education but focuses on Samrakshan's efforts towards fostering institutions that would play a pivotal role in Community Based Conservation action in the wildlife rich 'community owned' lands on the periphery of the Balpakram National Park. The experience is during my association with our Meghalaya Field Base in Baghmara.

Garo Hills stands out as a lonesome corner of Meghalaya tucked away between Assam and Bangladesh. 3 districts of East Garo Hills, West Garo Hills and South Garo Hills and Bangladesh comprise the Garo Hills Commissionarate. Baghmara, the district headquarters of South Garo Hills is located at the point where the low lying Indian hills melt into the fertile Bangladeshi plains. Self Help Group (SHG) is a form of independent community based and owned institution. Self Help Groups have evolved over the past three decades to today being a window for developmental action by a varied spectrum of government and non government agencies. They are regarded by many as the most effective tool for delivering livelihood as also natural resource conservation goals.

The lines below talk about learning during my association with the Garos in villages of South Garo Hills. The initial months were not quite easy as local people were not habituated to non government organization from outside the region (luckily!!) and we came with the national capital tag. Also was angst, more so amongst state authorities against people from mainland India conducting research and not bothering to even share the outcomes. As months passed the initial jittery attitude gave way to warmth and cooperation.

I was closely associated with our efforts with SHGs. Towards this we went through available books and articles, interacted with people working on the issue as also attended capacity building sessions on the subject. This however was just the beginning.

The Self Help Group Size. Most of the reading material pertaining to Self Help Groups stipulates the size of ten to fifteen members. This however was not the case in South Garo Hills. The average village size we came across was thirty to forty households spread over three to four square kilometers in an undulating terrain. It was difficult to get people together regularly and we after some deliberations initiated working with Self Help Groups having less than ten – including in a couple of cases with five members. The Self Help Groups did function efficiently but we ran into problems when they were to be a part of the banking system as the bank documents mention a minimum of ten members. The initial hiccups were overcome after deliberations with bank personnel that stretched on for longish hours fuelled by cups of sweet local tea. These were sorted out and we have traveled further up the road since - with the bank.

Female Self Help Groups. Available material and prevalent norms suggest Self Help Groups consisting solely of female members to be significantly stronger than Self Help Groups consisting of only males or of both male and female members. We, however, taking into consideration the matrilineal Garo society and the prevalent sexual equality went ahead with helping foster the loose groups of people (including male groups and groups having both male and female members) who approached us to robust self help groups. During the period though more groups having males have broken down than have flourished; we have been able to espouse a male inclusive Self Help Group programme.

Books. Literature and norms suggest maintenance of a set of eight to ten books for each Self Help Group. We were very slow with the books in the initial stages and on trying to understand as the reason behind the same I realized that our team itself was not highly comfortable with the idea of regularly recording financial dealings. After deliberations within and beyond the team the number of books was brought down to five and even these were introduced in a staggered manner complimented by capacity building sessions. We realize now that this is not sufficient and we need to work with the Self Help Groups to introduce furthers books that meet their needs as of today; these are far more complicated. However we expect that with the synergies from our and Self Help Group learning over the period we will be able to devise a method to overcome this lacunae.
Equality – Social and Economic. Books available hint towards facilitating separate Self Help Groups for people in different economic strata within the same village. On account of my high levels of ignorance pertaining to social issues and local language in the initial stages of my stay in South Garo Hills we had fostered Self Help Groups which did not met the criteria. I did not try to make any amends and also since have kept these criteria at abeyance as the excellent functioning of these Self Help Groups made me aware of the inherent equality within the society. If two people from different strata are working together and enjoying the process why should I “an outsider” interfere. While we may not have been able to work with the poorest of the poor we have restrained from applying our value judgments learning in turn from the Garo society.

We have since also made recommendations to the office of the State commissioner for Self Help Groups to take into consideration peculiarities of the region, look upon them as strengths and learn from them in lieu of the current approach of trying to paint the whole country with the same brush.

These learning from our association with Garo people are an ongoing process and the beginning has indeed been rewarding.

Acknowledging the invaluable support of all my colleagues in the jourey with SHGs May 2004 onwards.

Each of the images are of Panda village of South Garo Hills, taken during April 2007 by Pankaj Sekhsaria. Thanks Pankaj.

For sharing agreements and disagreements please write to Nimesh at nimesh.ved@gmail.com or contact Meghalaya Field Base at 03639 222187