Boosting income and voices

On an April morning, the sun pierces through a gray-blue haze in Nepal’s lowlands, near the India border. Well before midday, the temperature is fast approaching 100 degrees amid an ongoing heatwave.

Sitting in a shaded spot on her farm in Jahada Rural Municipality, Sangita Soren recalls how, when she was a daily wage laborer, there was no escaping this heat.

Working in the fields of local landowners, she could not decide when to take breaks. She would need to report to work early enough that she had to leave her two daughters at home for a few hours before their school day started.

A lack of access to land, formal education and government resources have left marginalized communities with few options beyond daily wage labor — mostly farming or, for some men, construction work in the nearby city of Biratnagar. These are just some of the barriers that groups once labeled lower caste face as they work toward success and belonging, even though Nepal’s caste system is now illegal. And while some women work in local fields, cultural norms keep others at home, even if their husbands’ incomes can’t meet the family’s needs.

Today, though, MCC partner Sahayogi Hatharuko Samuha (Group of Helping Hands, SAHAS) Nepal is helping families in this community to farm, fry and fish their way over these hurdles.

After receiving training from SAHAS, Soren received help from her in-laws in leasing land, once covered in bamboo, right by her home. Today it’s home to a variety of thriving crops, including tomatoes, okra, beans and cauliflower. Soren makes compost from farm waste to nourish the soil. Biopesticides that Soren makes on-site with a combination of bitter plants, animal urine and ash protect her crops without harsh chemicals.

What was once a mud pit, full of weeds, is now a fishpond in the middle of her plot. The fish she raises and sells are fed with waste from a pig she is raising in a pen near the compost bin. To the side of the pond is a hutch where, on this spring day, a mother duck sits atop newly laid eggs. When it’s time to take a dip in the pond, the ducks’ swimming strokes will help oxygenate the water. 

This flourishing farmyard has helped Soren earn more income. She and her family also benefit from her newly flexible schedule. “Now, I can work nearby in my farm, and I can calculate my time,” she says. “And if it is too hot, I can come for rest and to take care of children so I can manage better.”

With guidance from SAHAS, residents form groups and learn skills like vegetable growing. SAHAS helps these groups register with the rural municipality, which lets them build a rapport with their local governments. The groups also save money collectively, so that they can buy communal farming supplies or loan money to members in emergencies. In some communities, including Soren’s, these groups consist solely of women.

Other farmers’ groups, like the one Shree Ram Mahato joined, are co-ed. Mahato’s family has farmed in Jahada for generations, and he began accompanying them in the fields at a young age. 

But since his youth, weather patterns in the region have changed. The techniques he learned as a child are now less effective. “We were practicing a very traditional way of farming rice paddies, but nowadays it doesn’t rain on time,” he says.

SAHAS has taught Mahato’s farmers’ group how to minimize the shocks of climate change. They learned that properly spacing rice plants can help increase yields, even when growing conditions are less than ideal. SAHAS also taught them how to select varieties of grains and vegetables that are more resistant to flooding and drought.

And group members learned of the benefits of crop diversification. Throughout the year, Mahato grows a variety of plants, including wheat, okra and greens. He says that if his family loses one crop, “We try to recover from the other crops. And we do good in it.”

SAHAS helps groups diversify not just their fields, but their income overall, through activities like raising livestock and opening businesses. 

Take Suman Devi Paswan, who is sizzling her way to success with a snack stand, where she makes dishes like aloo chop (spiced potato fritters) on-site.

She learned to cook while helping her family prepare food for gatherings, but SAHAS helped her see the business potential that her lovingly made snacks held and gave her a low-interest loan to get started. Paswan enjoys staying busy with the shop, which has allowed her to connect with customers from a variety of backgrounds. “All people come,” she says, “and it feels like we have a stronger relationship now.”

Interactions like this can be critical to empowering marginalized communities, stresses SAHAS agricultural technician Rajendra Sah.

Sah says that in the past, higher-caste people would refuse food prepared by people from marginalized castes, even after the caste system was outlawed. Now, he says, people who would have been from higher castes come and eat, helping to break down the barriers that remain. 

Shova Beshra, a mother of three who used to rely on daily wage labor, now puts her sewing skills to work in a tailor shop she opened on a well-traveled road.

She got the idea through a SAHAS training on entrepreneurship. “I had that skill, but I had never thought of using that,” she says. “It definitely has increased my income.”

And Beshra’s group has found a new income stream that’s fed by a pond.

After learning about fish farming in a SAHAS training, members chose to wade into the aquaculture world together. SAHAS staff helped them secure a lease for a pond on nearby government land and advised them on everything from selecting fish fingerlings that would thrive at different depths of the pond to techniques to keep the pond clean and repel pests.

The women meet regularly to maintain the pond and feed the fish. “We take this fishpond as our community property,” says the group’s chairwoman, Kalpana Kumari Marandi. “If anything needs to happen, we do it together.” 

A few of the women, including Marandi, sell each catch at the market. The money they earn will go into the group savings. “It has been really very good because the money our husbands earn is not enough. So, this has really supported the family to meet other expenses,” she says.

Participating in the fishpond has boosted not only members’ incomes, but also their confidence, Marandi says. “Women in our community, in the Santhal community . . . they feel shy all the time . . . I’ve seen women who can’t even speak for themselves.”

But the women in her group trust in their talents and have learned to advocate for their needs, whether with their husbands or government officials. And the rest of the community has taken notice, she says. “In the rural municipality, we are known as entrepreneurs, fishing women.”

Marandi says that she and the other members hope that more women in the community will be inspired to follow in their footsteps.

For Beshra, achieving that dream means sharing what she learns with her family, including her two daughters. “My hope is to educate my children . . . so that they become good individuals . . . and they can reach higher up. They can achieve their dreams.” 

Sienna Malik is managing editor of A Common Place magazine. Uma Bista, a freelance photographer in Nepal, supplied photographs through Fairpicture.

Top photo: Shova Beshra, Kalpana Kumari Marandi and Chanmuni Tudu Satar hold fish from their pond in Nepal. MCC/Fairpicture photo/Uma Bista