Vanita Jalindar Pise was always embarrassed to invite her
wealthier sister to her own mud hut.
Born into a comfortable middle class family, Vanita was married at the
age of 18 into a seemingly prosperous family that ran a poultry business. Within three weeks of her marriage the mirage
of plenty was shattered when Vanita’s husband brought her to his poultry
barn. She assumed he wanted to show her
his wealth; he assumed she would clean the shed three times a day. As the unhappy years of increasing poverty,
debt, and hard physical labor wore on, she tried to hide her roughened hands
from her parents and sisters, but instead became the object of her family’s
pity.
Although she still lives in a mud house, 36-year old Vanita
has come a long way from hanging her head at family events. In April 2006 she was declared one of two
national winners of the CII-Bharti Woman Exemplar Award, sponsored annually by
the national Confederation of Indian Industries. The woman with the calloused hands and bright
smile shook hands with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as he congratulated her on
her accomplishments. The Exemplar Award is designed to honor “grass-root, poor,
under privileged community level women who have excelled in their contribution
in the development process….The main duty of the person who receives the award
is to empower others.” Vanita has been
doing just that for years.
Vanita has organized 35 SHGs and began coordinating the
women in her SHGs to buy goats and buffalo for their own milk-vending
businesses. In 2004 Vanita decided to
take a 15,000 rupee ($330) loan for a machine to make paper cups for prasad, or
prayer offerings. She bought the raw material and made and sold 5,000 cups each
day. When she realized how successful
her business was, she started a dealership of the machines so other women could
also profit.
In starting the SHGs, Vanita had to overcome her deep-rooted
fear of taking a loan and falling further into debt. In addition, despite her poverty and Backward
Caste, Vanita came from a middle class family, and had to build relationships
with lower-class women and gain their trust.
She says, “Whenever you work with women, the most important factor is
how you develop the trust and confidence. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or
poor; if you develop trust, they will have a confidence in you.”
For Vanita, winning the Woman Exemplar Award provided her
the confidence and pride that she had difficulty finding in her day to day
life, despite providing inspiration to hundreds of women who received guidance,
encouragement, and training at her hands.
She says, “After the award, I feel that if you do anything and work hard
seriously, nothing goes in waste, you do get a reward and it can come in money
or appreciation. I was always very much
ready to do everything but after the award it was the first experience in my
life that I could see the returns. I
feel even now this is a dream that I got the award. I never could have imagined this would be the
result of my struggle.”
