A BIG Idea by Shrey Goel

Adapted from one of two winning essays from the UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies’ 2014 Finding Big Ideas Essay Contest. The original essay can be found here.

This summer I had the privilege of working with the UHRC as a part of my Global Poverty and Practice Minor. This post attempts to outline how the UHRC operates, as I came to understand it, and why I found it’s operational philosophy to be a “big idea”.

The UHRC focuses on urban poverty by entering into slum communities and holding discussions with community members, proposing the idea of forming community women’s groups. These conversations aim to stimulate the women in slums to think about whether or not collective community action can help them confront the challenges they face. In my conversations with Dr. Agarwal, the Executive Director, he explained that an important aspect to this process is not pushing group formation on communities – if community members do not express interest, the UHRC steps back until interest grows because in the absence of an organic investment by the people, the initiative will simply be unsustainable. Once a group has formed, the first step is basic training surrounding health outreach and advocacy. Trainings cover tracking and surveying vulnerable groups (such as pregnant women) in slums as well as reaching out to government, private, and volunteer health providers to run camps in communities.

After groups are well-established, they pursue higher-level activities with the support of UHRC field workers as new needs emerge. For example one need that became evident early on was financial resilience to health exigencies and other similar events. When this need emerged, the UHRC began helping women’s groups establish collective insurance funds by providing trainings on how to collect member contributions, keep records, and administer loans. These collective insurance funds are different from microfinance loans because the seed money comes entirely from group members and loans are granted for home improvement initiatives and health emergencies in addition to microenterprise. Rules[1] are established and enforced by women’s group members who decide on conditions together, rather than following the mandates of an external institution. 

Another need that emerged early on in the UHRC’s operations was infrastructural improvement in communities and knowledge about applying for government schemes and programs. To address this, the UHRC began facilitating trainings on petition writing to local municipal authorities, discussing with groups the best ways to write collective appeals and document all their communications. Groups also began learning to write reminders to local officials when their requests for things like street paving and drain installation were ignored.

What I have outlined thus far is how the UHRC works in the field, but not why the UHRC has elected to approach urban poverty in this fashion. India’s trajectory of urbanization has led many families from poor rural and peri-urban areas into city-centers, but they arrive faster than the planning process can incorporate them. They are relegated to informal and often illegal occupations of whatever free space they can find, where they erect impermanent housing units or occupy existing run down units. The allure and pursuit of better economic prospects pits poor urban families in slums in competition, thus leading to fragmentation as families are not incentivized to work in solidarity towards mutual upliftment. These oppressive factors result in decreased household and community-level social cohesion in slums. Therefore, helping communities build stronger bonds through collective action is the goal that underlies the UHRC’s initiatives.

According to Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy, an individual’s belief in their ability to accomplish a task influences their actual capacity to accomplish it. Applying this concept to groups, Gibson has theorized that just as individuals have self-efficacy, so do groups have group efficacy. In a conversation with Dr. Agarwal, he explained to me that both forms of efficacy depend upon small instances of success early on in order to build confidence for more ambitious endeavors later because they enhance people’s belief in their own ability. This is why the UHRC begins with basic health outreach activity, which lends itself to higher success rates than petitions for infrastructural improvement, which require greater persistence and higher degrees of organizing. However as groups slowly progress, they develop the confidence to interface with municipal authorities and local officials, and this confidence has led to huge improvements in many UHRC program slums, such as paved roads, covered drains, and regular street and garbage cleaning.

What I believe differentiates UHRC from other NGOs is it’s underlying ethos. The UHRC has elected to pursue what Dr. Agarwal calls a “deprojectized” model of development. The organization has no intention of leaving the communities it operates in, and in many cases, other NGOs have come to Agra and Indore to run short-term programs, offering employment to UHRC women’s group members who are able to serve as a high-capacity work force. The women’s groups have become a platform for future development, but the UHRC doesn’t just strap women with responsibility and then leave – it stays and provides continual support through field workers and field offices.

            The UHRC’s approach aims to tackle poverty at a fundamental level. It is highly resource efficient, and effective, relative to costly multi-national aid initiatives. In bringing community knowledge and expertise to the forefront, this approach challenges the current centers of poverty knowledge generation (such as research institutions and global development banks); it asks poverty experts to recognize community knowledge as legitimate. But this is why the UHRC’s methods have so much potential. I remember one day speaking with some women’s group members in one of the poorest UHRC Agra slums called Indra Nagar. For most of its history, Indra Nagar has been a tent colony, home to nomadic merchants and craftsmen. One of the women explained that before the UHRC, nobody would even come into their slum. Nobody would loan them money and women could barely even leave their homes due to highly conservative gender dynamics. Recently, however, she was able to take out a 10,000 Rupee loan from her Federation[2]. She was able to open up a storefront and is currently paying back her loan at a rate of 1,000 Rupees per month. It is because of this high degree of community member investment that I heard many women this summer talk about going to yet unreached slums to establish women’s groups throughout my stay in Agra.

            I believe it all comes down to something basic – what Dr. Agarwal frequently called trust. What he meant by that is that by putting trust and faith in slum community members, an iterative process of mutual learning is able to take place. It’s a process that allows slum residents to cultivate their faith in their ability to navigate urban institutions and to build a stronger social fabric. It’s also a process that demonstrates the urban poor can and must be given an active role in the upliftment of their communities. And that to me is a big idea.

Shrey Goel
Environmental Science, Pre-Med (Global Poverty and Practice Minor)
4th Year Undergraduate, University of California, Berkeley

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[1] Such as monthly per-member contributions, late fees, and repayment interest rates, which rarely exceed 3%

[2] A Federation is a collective of women’s groups in a particular region that runs a higher level collective savings program and pursues larger-scale initiatives

Reflection On My Visit to Agra and the UHRC Women’s Groups: Saswathi Natta

Hello everyone,

I am currently a 4^th year undergrad student at Princeton University and this past summer, I was in Delhi at a Human Rights internship. In addition to my internship, I had the good fortune of being connected to Siddharth Agarwala and being able to see some of the work that he and the UHRC has done. I want to share some of my thoughts and later reflections on my visit to the Women’s groups in Agra.

My visit to Agra started with a quick trip to the Taj Mahal very early in the morning. It was beautiful, surrounded by a light mist from the early morning dew and sun beams. I walked around it in awe and appreciated it’s beauty along with all the other tourists snapping pictures and trying to capture an image of it’s magnificence to take home.

Leaving the Taj, I continued my visit to a very different part of Agra. A part that few see, or even know of when they visit the Agra that revolves around the Taj Mahal. Our driver, who had worked with UHRC before, knew his way into what I would call a slum area where there was a group of children waiting for us. They were like any other group of kids, bright eyed and curious about the newcomers. They were of all ages, from toddlers that were barely walking to college age students.  They showed us what they had been learning from UHRC about personal hygiene and displayed a map of their little neighborhood. I doubt that there exists any other map of the twists and turns and small one room homes of their neighborhood. It contained dots that represented households where a child had been vaccinated, visually displaying the progress that UHRC has made in the area. Then all the kids gathered around and told us what they wanted to be when they grew up. 

                  

Some wanted to be Teachers and Police officers to help other kids learn and catch thieves, others wanted to be Doctors and Engineers, get graduate degrees and make a difference in the world. Then there were those who were a bit shy about sharing and some had dropped out of school to help around the house. Some of the smallest kids stood up and recited the alphabets and poems. Some sang songs, and some brought out a little box that they called the DJ. It was a homemade wooden box with colorful lights that one of the littlest girls stood on and danced for us, like a Disco Dance floor.  Another boy had made a cardboard doll house and put in his own electric wiring that allowed for a fan and a little light bulb within the house to light up images of Ganesh. They were such smart kids and so friendly! One of us went out on the spot and got a bunch of samosas and little things like pencils to hand out before we left. Just as I was leaving, one of the older girls came to me and said that she was an engineering college student and asked for my email address. We’ve emailed a bit since and I sent her the pictures we took there.  Hopefully I can meet those kids again and see how they have grown and I hope that they reach their goals.

From there we went to one of the local Women’s groups. There were 7 women and an UHRC representative who talked about the main tasks that they perform for the community. The women were very organized and had a fund that they collected to loan out to women who needed medical help during pregnancies or to fulfill various other needs in the community, very similar to microfinance. The group also had a map of their neighborhood marking which homes had pregnant women and who was getting health care. These women were empowered, and organized and knew that they were making a positive impact in their neighborhood as leaders of the community. What struck me most about this gathering was that one of the women’s husbands was present at home, but he took a back seat. He just watched the women at work and didn’t interfere more than to place a fan in front of the group for their comfort. As we left this group we shook hands with all the women and just as we were about to get back in the car, the husband that had been present came and also shook my hand before sending us off to the next group.

If the first two groups were heartwarming and full of potential, this next group of women was even more inspirational. They were the women’s federation for the area, with representatives from each of the smaller women’s groups. They welcomed us with a song and a drum beat and showed us some of the main issues that they focus on. These included Health care, environmental awareness, microfinance in the community, and children’s education in addition to other issues. This was the group that would go and give police complaints, or argue against unfair treatment toward the community. This was the group that once ganged up on a medical professional who was taking advantage of women in the community under the cover of being a doctor. This was a group of women who used to be simple housewives, but who had learned to be independent and strong. Some even talk of how they defied their husbands and in-laws to attend these meetings because they wanted to have a real impact on the community. They also shared some of the failures, of how they raised funds for a child’s medical bills but ended up losing the child, but they learned from each experience. I have never seen such a sense of purpose and determination in a group. They were determined to better themselves and their community with little to no outside help. As a goodbye, the women sang us a song about their determination and of how they would break any lock that would hold them back from coming to these meetings and creating an impact. They danced and laughed and sang with a sense of freedom that I have not seen in many people living in such poverty. They really convinced me that with women empowered like this, they can face anything as a community and fight for their rights and make the right choices for their community.

My final view of the Taj came from the other side of the river and its beauty was just as magnificent as it had been that morning, but this time, for me, it was overshadowed by everything else I had see in Agra. Those women and children that I had met, who had so much strength and compassion and hope.  If the Taj is one of humanity’s greatest works, then these small grass roots organizations like the women’s federation that the UHRC helped create are yet another symbol of humanity’s achievement. If this model could be replicated around the world, it has the potential to empower many people and allow them to provide for themselves and their communities. Issues of education and poverty and sanitation could be addressed from the bottom up.

The work that the UHRC is doing is absolutely amazing. I hope to see more of it and contribute my part to spreading this kind of community empowerment as I go through my career.

Saswathi Natta

4th Year Undergraduate Student at Princeton University, 

Visited UHRC Agra Program in July 2012