I spent five months working for a social and development organisation in South East India. During this time, I worked with women both in the city of Pondicherry and a rural village called Angalakuppam, situated fourteen kilometres south of Pondicherry. Both sets of women seemed to express opinions

on how they thought the other women lived so it seemed an interesting topic to explore. I selected my participants using a convenience sample of the women I worked with as I had already built up a trust relationship with them. I interviewed the women on three main areas; their daily routine, life experiences and perceptions of the other women. The information gained was used as the basis for comparison and evaluation as to whether their perceptions were the reality. I also took into consideration multiple meetings I had with the founder of the organisation who gave background and context to the everyday issues faced by the women in the village and the city.

Both sets of women seemed to hold quite romantic ideas of how the other half live. The village women were of the opinion that everyone in the city leads the good life, filled with opportunity, education and wealth, forgetting about the families who face unspeakable hardships either in the slums or on the streets. The urban women viewed the village women as leading the green, natural and beautifully traditional life, not realising that at times the women working in the paddy fields didn’t receive any monetary wage, being paid only in rice or vegetables.

This is not to say that they did not recognise the downsides to the others way of life. The city women saw the rural women as leading a difficult life filled with hardships including abuse from their husbands, (sometimes fuelled by alcohol) and long days of hard manual labour. While the rural women recognised the expensive, polluted life the city women lead, combined with a lack of community and support which they take for granted in the village.

Despite the geographic and economic differences of these two sets of women, they both endure their own hardships; firstly because they are female in a traditionally male dominated society and secondly because none of them are in a medium to high economic bracket.

For a female in India, everything is decided for her by her family as soon as she is born; what school she will go to, when she will finish her education, who she will marry, when she will have her first child, when she will stop having children, whether she will work and in extreme cases, to the extent of when she will die. This is slowly changing in India, but some states are a lot more liberalised than others, Tamil Nadu being one of the most conservative states, which is reflected in a bordering village such as Angalakuppam, with the rural areas generally being more conservatively traditional than the cities.

The city women may be comparatively wealthier than the village women, but they are living in an area where everything also costs more. Additionally, the majority of homes in the village were built by the people who live in them and therefore don’t owe rent or a mortgage on them. The poorer city people though do have the advantage of living in the centre of Pondicherry as a state, whereas the surrounding villages are sometimes considered a no-mans land as they lie on the boarders of Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu, neither government very willing to aid the development of these types of villages.

It is true to say that urban life, even a small city such as Pondicherry, does have the advantages of accessible education and various employment opportunities which a rural village has neither of. Without the intervention of an outside body, such as an NGO like Sharana, to educate the village adults on the importance of education and give the financial backing to enable the families to send their children to school, a rural village may continue to produce female children with their sole purpose in life being to get married, produce more children and probably work in the fields through no real choice of their own. The village women realised this about their lives, as most of them stated that they would not move to the city because people in the city have an education and money, and they don’t have either. The majority also gave the indication that they were unhappy in their lives post-marriage and only their children gave them hope. Half the city women in the sample were also unhappy in their post-marriage lives, but what is interesting about this is that they were the women who were originally from rural villages and had moved to the city and were in relatively low paid jobs.

Sharana as an organisation are not trying to change the traditions of India or the innocence of the villages, but they are trying to develop women and children especially to enable them to lead a better quality of life. Initially, Sharana faced opposition by the men in Angalakuppam village, but it gradually faded way once they were educated about its benefits. Sharana has been successful in the Angalakuppam village via a number of measures, including a sponsorship programme for the children. This pays for the children’s education and materials and a record is kept of their academic progress until they are 21 years of age or until their education is finished.

There is also a micro-credit scheme in place for the women where they apply for interest-free loans, the order of which is decided on a through a lottery based system. The majority of the loans are used to purchase cows and the milk is then sold on to a co-operative society enabling them to repay these loans regularly. The cost of a cow being anything from R’s 8,000-25,000. The success of the micro-credit scheme is illustrated by the women’s requests that their children are no longer sponsored as they can now pay for their education themselves using the money they are making from their venture.

The biggest factor of change for the village women may be the Sharana community centre. This gave temporary jobs to the women who helped to build the centre, plus four permanent posts to the women who work in the centre. The centre includes a crèche that the children attend free of charge so their mothers can go to work in the paddy fields. The children are given a hot milk snack, lunch and some basic Tamil and English lessons, ensuring nutrition and development. The centre is also home to a medical dispensary where the villagers are treated for minor injuries and ailments by an original villager herself.

Sharana’s work is not limited to the village as they also provide sponsorship to underprivileged children in the city of Pondicherry where alcoholism among men is a huge problem which often leads to domestic violence. Sharana works with the women of affected families to protect them from violence and help their husbands to address their alcohol problem. Pondicherry is recognised as an alcohol ‘wet zone’, hence easily available cheap liquor, as cheap as R’s 2/-. Sharana offers the men an A.A type service and job opportunities which has led to a decrease in the rate of alcoholism. It is easy given our Western attitudes to question why the woman doesn’t simply leave or divorce her husband, but this can often put a woman at more risk in society where the absence of that yellow thread, stating she is married, puts her at threat of sexual abuse from other men.

One of the village ladies stated in her interview that;

Since Sharana came to the village, it is more like a city…... Now, here safety in crèche and we see some city things like crayons, charts, many, many things. Before, children soiling everywhere when mothers at agriculture work, but improvement from Sharana…if they stay many years, happy.

It is clear that Social and Development Organisations such as Sharana are necessary both in the city of Pondicherry and the villages on the periphery such as Angalakuppam, to aid development. They are especially important for females, to open their minds and the doors to new things and ways of life and to bring the opportunities and advantages of the city to the village.

Helen Patterson