In Odisha, they provide subsidised food, measure water & restore common urban spaces

A remarkable transformation is underway in Odisha. A unique dedicated workforce of women from self-help groups (SHG) is delivering and leading crucial government programmes around the state.

SHG members today are Jal Sathis and Swachh Sathis. They take care of patient diets, provide subsidised food, manage city waste and faecal treatment plants and restore and maintain common urban spaces.

The Odisha government has taken a big leap by employing these women in delivering crucial welfare services and in a range of urban development programmes — from hospital diet management and subsidised meal programmes to ensuring water bills and solid and liquid waste management — under its Mission Shakti programme.

With this, women from different SHGs are now implementing partners. Their SHGs are implementing agencies that help in running the state.

This can very well be called the next step of the Odisha government’s Mission Shakti programme, which was adopted in 2001 and promoted women SHGs as a key strategy for achieving women’s empowerment.

Down To Earth (DTE) spoke to women involved with different government departments. Most of them said that over the years, they have been involved in the same things like broom-making, tailoring, making papad, etc. But they have found a new sense of socio-economic empowerment with the government work that they have been awarded. They see themselves as crucial partners in the state’s development.

Below are some of the exemplary case studies:

Redeveloping Bhubaneswar’s Nicco Park

“The ones planted near the boundary are called Wedelia and these planted near the water are called Canna indica,” says a confident 41-year-old Manisha Ranasingh, president of Baba Gorakhanath Swayam Sahayak Goshti or SHG.

She is standing inside the 24-acre (9.7 hectare) Nicco Park. She has undertaken its redevelopment and completed it in the last one year, along with 11 other members of her SHG.

“Wedelia holds the soil and Canna indica is a natural filter which cleans the water of pathogens,” she says.

On October 17, 2022, the 12 women had stepped inside Nicco Park — also called BDA city centre — and considered whether they would be able to handle the gargantuan task at hand.

They were the new contractors for restoring the park. It had a foul smell and was filled with solid waste as well as plastic. Animal carcasses were lying around in ponds, drains were full of silt, the pathways were unwalkable, mosquitoes and bees hovered over the area while all the equipment and play area had been destroyed.

Nicco Park had been completely damaged during Cyclone Fani in April 2019. The amusement park, the first in the state, was set up by the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) in 1998. But it had been lying defunct due to lack of maintenance. Then, the cyclone destroyed its infrastructure.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) contracted different stages of the work on the 24 acres to a total of 22 SHGs. The main task of the Baba Gorakhanath SHG included dewatering, deweeding, biomining and dismantling of stone masonry from three sedimentation tanks.

“We had never managed a huge task like this before. We were nervous about things like hiring labour and supervising them, finding the best tools for the work, etc. But the training before commencement of work had helped,” says Manisha Ranasingh, member of the SHG.

The group had received training from BMC, followed by handholding support from young professionals under the state’s TULIP (The Urban Learning Internship Program) scheme.

There were times when the group engaged in manual labour along with the workers, says another SHG member, 50-year-old Tulasi Das.

Today, even though the overall redevelopment work is still on, the park wears a different look. The ponds have been desilted and biomining has been completed on most of the area. There is no foul smell and no visible solid and plastic waste. The women completed their part of the work in 2023.

The 12 women formed the Baba Gorakhanath SHG in December 2017 and started with a small tiffin centre out of their homes with the help of a Rs 3 lakh loan under Mission Shakti. The group was earning between a meagre Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 per day with the tiffin centre. The average household income of the members increased to between Rs 20,000 and Rs 30,000 because of the project.

Participating in government-related work has been a gamechanger for them. Besides contributing to their economic progress, it has promoted skill development among SHGs and made them a crucial partner in development of the area they reside in. All the women in the group live within 1-5 km of the park. According to reports, the contract for the park maintenance was given out twice to private companies since 1998. But both had failed to ensure its proper upkeep and had pulled out of the contract.

In 2022, they got to know that the government was on the lookout for commissioning park redevelopment work orders to SHGs. They applied and were awarded, following which they took out a Rs 5 lakh loan from a bank to start the work.

Odisha has been able to merge Mission Shakti with several other programmes like MUKTA (Mukhya Mantri Karma Tatpara Abhiyan). It is an urban wage employment initiative launched in April 2020 as a measure to create employment opportunities for urban poor who lost their jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is now being expanded to creating durable community assets.

“We have realised that the success rates are higher when a community is handling the projects in their own interest,” says Sarada Prasad Panda, project director-cum-secretary of Odisha’s State Urban Development Agency, which implements different anti-poverty schemes.

Under MUKTA, a total of 7.5 per cent of the project cost is utilised as a supervision charge.

The group received their payments on time through the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) in three instalments of Rs 1.87 lakh, Rs 4.80 lakh and Rs 20,000. They paid the loan from this money and have invested the rest in the SHG account.

The next step for them is to apply for the maintenance work of the park, once the redevelopment is completed.

“We are very proud of the work we have done. We hope the government sees this and we get the maintenance work as well in the next stage,” says Ranisingh.

‘Jal Sathis’ in Puri

Jal Sathis. Photo: Shagun/CSE

In a house in ward number 26 in Puri, 31-year-old Sabita Behera starts the Point of Sale (POS) machine. She clicks on a number of applications related to district and area, enters a password, clicks on the option of ‘water tax’ and enters the consumer number she knows by heart. This generates a slip, which shows the money the consumer needs to pay. The resident then proceeds to make an online payment. They also have a small discussion on whether the 24-hour water supply is working fine.

Behera is a jal sathi for 972 such houses in Puri. Every day, 32 women in Puri step out of their homes and visit households across the city’s 32 wards, collecting water bills and registering citizens’ grievances.

Puri, with the population of 0.26 million, was the first city which implemented the jal sathi initiative.  

Selected from a total of 1,147 SHGs in the city, these jal sathis are the face of Puri’s water department today. They act as a bridge between consumers and water supply authorities at the ward level.

The jal sathi initiative was started in 2019 by Water Corporation of Odisha (WATCO) under Odisha’s Housing and Urban Development Department. The idea was to engage women from SHGs in water distribution and consumer management, with the aim of female empowerment. The women facilitate urban drinking water supply management by providing consumer-friendly services at their doorstep.

This article was originally published as part of  Down To Earth’s special issue dated 1-15 March, 2024.  Download the full story for free

When the Odisha government started the mission of universal piped water supply in each urban household and its ambitious ‘drink from tap’ mission from Puri, it recognised the need for community partnership to achieve this and for a significant upgradation in its water supply infrastructure.

“SHG members are the representatives of communities they live in. Roping them in was essential for effective service delivery and inclusivity,” says Bhabani Shankar Mohanty, general manager, Puri Division, WATCO.

Jal Sathis are engaged on an incentive model. They read water meters, undertake doorstep water bill distribution and digitally collect water fee, collect water and sewerage tax, facilitate new water connections and regularise existing unauthorised connections, do field testing of water quality at user end, facilitate consumer complaint redressal and sensitise the public on water conservation and health and hygiene aspects.

It has brought a change in consumers’ behaviour, according to Mohanty.

“We ask Jal Sathis to take their name literally and build a connection and trust with consumers. The consumers now give honest feedback and tell their complaints. The bill payment regularity and frequency has improved. They also help in developing a water judicious behaviour and create ownership among consumers,” he says.

It was not an easy ride. Initially, the women had to face discrimination from citizens, who either refused to pay bills on time or refused to authorise their illegal connections.

“In the first year, I have had cases where people have thrown the bill on my face. The metered connections and 24-hour water supply was a new concept at that time, especially in slums. I felt very disrespected those days. But we kept on visiting and spreading awareness and slowly, they understood. Now, they  call us themselves and ask as when we can come to collect the month’s payment. I get calls where people see the water supply of their neighbours and call me, saying they also want metered connections,” says Behera.

In some cases, women even had to face caste discrimination.

“Since Puri is a temple town, my area has a lot of households with priests. They used to ask me to stand outside the house and make payments by throwing money from afar, so that they don’t have to come in contact with me. But it is much better over the years,” says 40-year-old Tina Chatoi.

While launching the initiative in December 2019, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had said, “Clean water is the most important thing for a healthy life. The inclusion of women in this initiative will strengthen the system. It will provide economic empowerment to women volunteers.”

The jal sathis get five per cent of whatever they collect as water fee and two per cent of the taxes. They receive Rs 100 on every connection and Rs 20 for every water testing completed. In a month, each jal sathi has to conduct 20 tests at the household level.

Behera says she earns between Rs 12,000 and Rs 13,000 a month on average. Last year, she shifted her daughter to a private school from a government school. “The first thing I do with the money I earn is pay her tuition fee of Rs 5,000,” she says. Her husband has a small snack shop and the money she earns supplements their household income.

Chatoi, who has been working as a jal sathi since 2020 in 593 houses of ward number 15, earns Rs 12,000 a month on average. In 2020, Chatoi’s husband, who was working as a craftsman in Delhi, lost his job after the Covid-19 induced lockdown. He came back to Puri. That was the time Chatoi got selected as a jal sathi and underwent a three-month training.

“In the training, we used to get Rs 4,000 per month as salary. That time, since my husband’s shop closed down, this Rs 4,000 was the only money we had to buy food and groceries,” she says.

Subhalakshmi Sahoo, 40, lost her husband to liver jaundice six months ago and is now the sole earner of the family, which includes two school-going daughters. She earns somewhere between Rs 8,000-Rs 9,000 by serving as a jal sathi to 922 houses in ward number 31.

All three women have been involved with the programme since the beginning in 2020. In fact, 25 of the total 32 women have been involved since 2020. Seven had to leave due to different reasons, following which new jal sathis were selected from SHGs.

One such woman is 23-year-old Subhalaskhmi Rai, who used to work as a receptionist in an insurance office on a meagre salary of Rs 2,500 per month. Today, as a jal sathi, she earns Rs 13,000 monthly. “Our household runs on my salary,” says Rai, who lives with her dependent mother. On February 8, 2024, when DTE met her, she was going to buy a fridge of Rs 16,000. “I have been saving this money for a fridge.”

With economic empowerment, the women also feel a sense of social empowerment in their jobs. “We dress up, wear our uniforms, get out of our homes, meet and interact with people, use technology. This makes us feel like ‘professionals’. This makes us feel that we are involved in the government’s development work,” says Chatoi.

Today, Odisha has 946 jal sathis in total and women from other parts of the state visit Puri jal sathis to learn from their experiences.

Hospital diet management in Bissam Cuttack

The cafe in Bissam Cuttack. Photo: Shagun/CSE

It’s 11:30 am and there is a flurry of activity in ‘Mission Shakti Cafe’ in Rayagada district’s Bissam Cuttack town. Some women are peeling vegetables in a large aluminium vessel; others are busy cooking ‘dal’. The breakfast has already been sent and the cooks go over today’s menu for lunch and dinner.

The cafe, since the last 1.5 years, has been supplying food to Bissam Cuttack’s Community Health Centre (CHC), which is the only government hospital in the town. The women are the official suppliers of food for the 16-bed hospital.

Eleven tribal women from 11 SHGs in Bissam Cuttack block came together to form a block level federation (BLF), which was then awarded the contract for timely supply of nutritious food to hospitals in a safe and hygienic manner and manage the patients’ diet admitted at the hospital.

“The hospital has given us a diet chart according to which we prepare the food. Every morning at 8 am we are told as to how many patients are there for the day,” says 50-year-old Singari Wanaka, president of Adivasi Vikash Mahila Sangh SHG and also of the Basundhra Mahasangh BLF, which is managing the cafe.

Breakfast consists of items like idli and upma, lunch and dinner include a dal, a vegetable and rice/roti and a sweet. The cost for lunch and dinner is Rs 50 per plate and breakfast is Rs 20. Besides supplying food to the hospital, the women also earn by running the cafe, which sees 50-100 customers throughout the day. From a tea cup for Rs 10 to a plate of mutton rice for Rs 200, the café has a variety of food items.

While the women were supplying food to the hospital from the same place, the café was opened to the public only from June 2023.

Of the 11 women, four work as cooks, three as waiters, two as cleaners and two supervise and run the place.

Jayanti Behera, nursing officer at the hospital, which sees cases from routine surgeries to deliveries, says the food comes according to the diet chart, with eggs being supplied at least 2-3 times a week.

“The food is good, hygienic and supplied on time. Before this, a private vendor was the supplier. We didn’t have any diet chart at that time and the food used to come only twice a day,” she says.

The cooks received a training in Bhubaneswar before the cafe opened. 

The women were involved in different works in their SHGs — from brick- and broom-making to preparing chatua powder (a mix of roasted cereals and grains) and cotton cultivation.

Now, the café makes a profit of Rs 10,000-15,000 per month, says Wanaka.

The building was constructed from Mission Shakti funds. The group then invested their own federation funds and took a loan of Rs 6 lakh to start running the place.

“Whatever I earn from here, I invest in paying my son’s college fee,” says 38-year-old Geeta Pradhan, who works as a cook here and gets Rs 10,000 as monthly salary. Her husband is a daily wage construction worker and working here has given her family some financial stability. 

The next step is now expanding the place into a ‘millet café’, under the Odisha government’s Millet Mission. The construction work is in progress on the top floor of the building.

To promote millet consumption in Odisha, Mission Shakti and Odisha Millets Mission have tied up to open millet cafes across the state. These cafes are managed by SHGs or SHG federation and sell an array of millet-based food products.