Samhita

Category: Sustainable Livelihoods

  • Life is About Facing Challenges

    Life is About Facing Challenges

    Bilal, a Sozni artisan and entrepreneur with disability from Jammu and Kashmir, is driven to face the many challenges that lie in his path and works to emerge stronger from any adversity

    Bilal Ahmed Bhat, 39, is a man of grit and resilience. When his father, a Sozni embroidery businessman, retired after 40 years owing to health issues, Bilal took on the bread-winning responsibilities of the family. He worked for a local entrepreneur for a while, but soon decided he wanted to be his own boss. So he started his own business, and also, with enterprising spirit, obtained a Master’s degree simultaneously. Bilal’s business specialises in Sozni embroidery, a craft he learnt from his father and a style of embroidery originating in Jammu and Kashmir, his home state. From his workshop in Badgam, Bilal makes shawls and garments to be sold throughout India (via wholesale B2B channels) and within his community (via B2C channels).

    The success of his business benefits 35 artisans in the region, 5 of whom are disabled. Bilal himself has an orthopedic disability in his lower limbs, but he doesn’t let anything stop him. He said, “I treat everyone equally. Sometimes, disabled people think of themselves as weak, but I think of everyone as equals.”

    Bilal’s business, and the community it served, were significantly affected when COVID-19 reached Indian shores. The lockdowns, curfews and fear of infection significantly affected mobility, and also disrupted National supply chains. During the first wave in 2020, Bilal’s shawl sales reduced drastically, to when he left the home or when someone came over to purchase some. This is when he became part of ATPAR (www.atpar.in), an organisation that provides support to entrepreneurs with disabilities, and joined their Entrepreneurship Development Training Program (EDP). He also became a member of  NEDAR, a Network of Entrepreneurs with Disabilities, initiated by ATPAR, which provided business counselling, mentoring, market linkages and support through training in financial management, and sales and marketing. Bilal availed all the skilling services given by EDP and was also introduced to REVIVE for financial support. 

    The second wave, however, was extremely disruptive. In April 2021, Bilal did not have sufficient funds to pay artisan wages or purchase raw materials. “In Kashmir, the whole year has been bad for business due to lockdowns, internet disruptions, etc. How can we afford to take loans from banks and pay 12% interest rates?”

    Bilal’s resilience, hard work and commitment to his community made him a perfect beneficiary for the no-interest, zero-collateral returnable grant offered by REVIVE. He was supported with INR 40,000 (USD 538) in April 2021 in the form of a returnable grant — i.e., there is no legal obligation, only a moral one, as the money returned will circle back to benefit another beneficiary under the REVIVE program. “I wish this type of support is always available — I’ve never seen it anywhere else,” said Bilal.

    An astute businessman, Bilal is planning the grant funds carefully and being mindful of market uncertainty due to COVID-19. He has thus used the funds to pay his artisans a basic wage and also purchase raw materials to keep the business thriving. He is also considering innovative means to attract new customers — his most recent business idea is to showcase his work on online marketplaces such as Facebook and Instamojo. “Life is about facing challenges,” said Bilal, “We can’t grow without them.”

    This story was edited by Raveena Joseph
  • Not All Superheroes Wear a Cape

    Not All Superheroes Wear a Cape

    Sole bread-winner Valarmathi Thangaswami, a 55-year-old sanitation worker from Trichy, works to support her struggling son despite all the hurdles that line her path

    To the world, Valarmathi Thangaswami is a 55-year-old sanitation worker who lives in a shanty  in Trichy. But at home, she dons the identity of a super-mother. After her husband’s passing, Valarmathi started working with the support of a self-help group to provide for her three young children. 

    Today, her biggest worry is her 24-year-old son who is caught in the menace of drug abuse. With a paltry monthly salary of ₹4,000 she is the sole bread-winnder of her household — she has to pay for rent, groceries, medical expenses, and her son’s upkeep. Her daily job requires her to put herself at high risk, as she goes door-to-door collecting and segregating waste. As the situation demands, she often ends up spending extended hours on duty to earn an extra buck. 

    Seeing her son make poor choices, she often wonders if he is worthy of her struggle. When such thoughts cross her mind, Valarmathi tries to take each day in her stride. She said, “Be it coronavirus or any other difficult situation, I have to work and earn for my family.” 

    Adjusting to the new normal in the wake of the pandemic, Valarmathi complains about the discomfort caused by the thick gloves that she is now necessitated to wear, despite the scorching heat of Trichy. However, all things considered, she feels she has a lot to be thankful for and thinks of herself as lucky: her employer, the Municipal Corporation of Trichy, has been providing immune-boosting medication, training, and protective gear to frontline workers like herself. 

    Additionally, IDFC FIRST Bank, in collaboration with Samhita, provided Direct Benefit Transfers (DBTs), and facilitated a government-scheme linkages program to benefit 633 blue-collared workers including cab drivers, truck drivers, sanitation workers, women entrepreneurs, and other daily-wage labourers. 

    Valarmathi was one of the sanitation workers supported by IDFC FIRST Bank. Following a DBT of ₹3,000 Valarmathi was able to buy a sack of rice and groceries for two months. Appreciative of the intervention, she described how each time she comes across the rice bag, it gives her a sense of reassurance that she will get through this crisis. 

    Through the second component of the intervention, the welfare-scheme eligibility-screening camp, Valarmathi has been able to connect to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme and get a PAN card commissioned for her son. The CM’s health-insurance scheme is designed for underprivileged families that have low annual income. This scheme provides a cover of ₹5,00,000 to each family for every policy year. 

    Having connected to it, Valarmathi is now confident about meeting medical expenses, especially for her son’s health. In the future, she hopes that her income and benefits from the medical insurance will help her sustain her son through the de-addiction. Also, with her son’s PAN card made, he can gain access to other social-security schemes in the future — Valarmathi hopes this will enable him to stand on his own feet in the future.

    This story was edited by Raveena Joseph

  • Can we distribute the burden of recovery from the pandemic more equitably?

    Can we distribute the burden of recovery from the pandemic more equitably?

    As India and the world prepare for any successive waves of COVID-19, many have still not recovered from the economic impact of the previous ones.

    Moving forward, we should keep the needs and experiences of the most vulnerable at the center of our approach. While many have shown and continue to show tremendous self-reliance, there is a crucial need to reduce the burden of recovery on individuals.

    This article details policy recommendations to ensure a more resilient future for India’s most vulnerable communities. It follows three business owners in India whose livelihoods have been crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic. All of them are participants of the our REVIVE initiative.

    Click here to read
  • Reviving India’s Informal Economy

    Reviving India’s Informal Economy

    Just as India was recovering from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the second and more vicious wave pushed many to the brink of livelihood loss. As news of the health crisis takes precedence, the economic ravages of the pandemic and its impact on livelihoods has been less documented and discussed. The devastating effects of the pandemic have had compounding negative effects on women’s progress, access and inclusion of vulnerable communities, social security of informal workers, etc. 

    As we continue to see the devastating effects of the second surge, we have signs of hope with vaccine efforts increasing and international collaborations, with the Indian diaspora at the forefront, contributing efforts to address the gaps this crisis has revealed.

    The REVIVE Alliance, the brainchild of Samhita, in partnership with USAID, MSDF, Omidyar Network India, UNDP and British High Commission, New Delhi, is a financial instrument to aid those who are excluded from banks and other formal lending institutions. The intervention is designed to protect those who are most severely affected by the pandemic, so that they can come back from the crisis stronger and in a way that enables them to be more integrated in the formal economy. In essence, the goal is to build back a better normal.

    In this important and powerful conversation between Priya Naik, CEO and Founder, Samhita Social Ventures; Rahil Rangwala, Director of India Programs, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation; Alison Eskesen, Vice President, Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth; and Dr. Amita Vyas, Non-resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre, moderated by Imrana Khera, Partnership Advisor, USAID India and hosted by The Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre, the panelists discusses why it is important to take a comprehensive approach to recovery from COVID-19, keeping in mind the importance of livelihoods, healthcare and educational needs of vulnerable communities. 

    Watch the whole conversation here:

    Insights from the panelists:

    RAHIL RANGWALA,
    Director of India Programs, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

    India typically has an unemployment rate hovering around 5%. When we experienced the first wave in 2020, our unemployment rate peaked at 23%, because India went into one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. It devastated India’s 80% informal economy, with so many jobs and livelihoods lost. We recovered by the end of 2020; we were down to a 7% unemployment rate. In May 2021, during the second wave, we were back to 12%. In a recent CMIE (Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy) survey, 97% of households in India have reported decline in household income. In the second wave, India has lost 10 million jobs.

    PRIYA NAIK,
    CEO and Founder, Samhita Social Ventures

    REVIVE was set up with a modest ambition to aid blue collar workers who were unimaginably affected by the pandemic. We started with a straightforward direct cash transfer to 33,000 identified individuals. We soon realised that the path towards recovery, resilience and growth for different people — a gig worker, a woman sanitation worker or a farmer — all looked very different. With MSDF support, we set up a returnable grant instrument. It was a no-risk, flexible and safe mechanism to get people back on their feet, as they could use the money however they wanted and return it whenever they were able. We wanted to ensure dignity in how we were structuring the mechanism — these were not people who needed our charity. They are hardworking individuals with full-time jobs and it’s a pandemic that has devastated their livelihoods. In the last year, we’ve learnt that when you give people money not just to meet their immediate needs, but also their future aspirations, they use it wisely and pay it back. We now see between 93-100% repayment of our returnable grants.

    ALISON ESKESEN,
    Vice President, Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth

    Existing gaps have been exacerbated by the economic long tail of COVID-19. India lagged behind in women’s labour force participation even before this crisis. The effect of COVID-19 has really pushed us behind further. So we need to think about empowerment in a more holistic way: how do you work with women to grow their business acumen and skills? Also, how do you work with them to engage their families and have conversations to create a more supportive ecosystem at home? How do you reach out to these families and communities to start shifting mindsets? We need to create more conducive environments where women can succeed and realise their full economic potential. 

    Dr. AMITA VYAS,
    Non-resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre

    We need to take a comprehensive approach to livelihood recovery during this pandemic — we have to address health needs, and also educational needs. We’ve learnt that in West Africa, after the Ebola epidemic, adolescent girls did not go back to school. They were married off. We are now going into a second academic year of schools being shut down and that can have devastating effects on girls’ education. India has made great strides in girls’ education in the last decade, at the secondary level and also in higher education. We can’t let those gains diminish. 

  • Returnable grants: Reimagining credit for a better normal

    Returnable grants: Reimagining credit for a better normal

    The pandemic and its harsh impact on informal workers and macro and nano enterprises inspired the creation of the Returnable Grant (RG).

    RG is one where there is no legal obligation to repay; the expectation is only ‘moral’, i.e., the recipient is encouraged to repay when she has achieved some intended milestones of financial recovery.

    RGs are designed to fill a specific gap in India’s credit ecosystem for small businesses: dealing with short term emergency situations or external shocks.

    Our CEO, Priya Naik and Varad Pande (वरद पाण्डे) from Omidya Network India write about how Revive Alliance is deploying the Returnable Grant to aid recovery and resilience of informal workers and small businesses in the recent edition of Economic Times.

    The RG enables funders to benefit 5-7x the number of individuals when compared to a simple grant. Once an RG is repaid, it circulates back into the system to support others with similar needs.

    A comprehensive learning and evaluation plan built into the REVIVE platform will provide further data on suitability, behaviours, utilisation and so on.

    Click here to read the entire article
  • The need to care about the care economy

    The need to care about the care economy

    Both unpaid and paid care work is essential for any society to survive and thrive and the indispensable nature of care work was further highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic last year. Apart from being necessary for the normal day to day life, the care economy is a huge employer, with serious growth potential.

    Ria Kasliwal of the Observer Research Foundation has offered a fresh perspective on livelihoods generated through care work and its socio-economic impact.

    Click here to read the article

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  • Using Blended Finance to sustain informal workers during Covid-19

    Using Blended Finance to sustain informal workers during Covid-19

    According to the International Labour Organization, more than 400 million informal sector workers in India are at risk of falling into severe poverty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that informal workers have no health, social, or legal protections to fall back on. Without access to formal financing, their ability to survive serious economic shocks is handicapped.

    This is the challenge that the REVIVE Alliance aims to address at its core. By bringing together industry leaders and philanthropic capital, REVIVE provides zero cost Returnable Grants and skill training to help India’s workers bounce back from the most severe economic crisis of the 21st century. 

    To know more about how REVIVE and it’s parters are helping families and communities build sustainable livelihoods, read this article by our co-funder USAID. 

    Read

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  • Can the Microcredit Model Be Improved?

    Can the Microcredit Model Be Improved?

    The problem here is not a lack of microcredit programs or their execution but rather something in the model itself. This leads us to ask: Can we modify or extend certain aspects of the microfinance model to achieve better outcomes for recipients?

    Vikas Dimble, Director of Knowledge and Research at Samhita and Ahmed Moshfiq Mobarak, Professor of Economics at Yale University write on how microcredit can be used to help poor communities pull through unexpected shocks if the microcredit model is modified to incorporate inclusivity and flexible lending practices.

    Click here to read the article
  • Innovative lending practices can improve traditional microfinance

    Innovative lending practices can improve traditional microfinance

    Research on the traditional microfinance model reveals the alterations that can be made to further small businesses and welfare gains. Vikas Dimble, Associate Director of Knowledge and Research at Samhita, and Ahmed Moshfiq Mobarak, Professor of Economics at Yale University emphasize the importance of flexible lending models, using local information to select eligible beneficiaries and allowing beneficiaries to make use of microcredit beyond entrepreneurial purposes.

    Click here to read the article
  • Freedom to earn a livelihood with dignity

    Freedom to earn a livelihood with dignity

    Covid-19 was an eye-opener for many businesses in that it revealed the importance of migrant and informal workers in a business’s supply chains. Undoubtedly, the corporate sector holds the potential and responsibility to change the dynamics within which workers operate. It is therefore in their own enlightened self-interest that businesses should understand migrant workers’ perspectives and account for their welfare.

    A particularly useful way of identifying vulnerabilities and addressing them systematically is the Responsible Corporate Citizenship Continuum (RCCC). The RCCC seeks to articulate the role of the private sector in society and provide companies with a framework to include human rights and social and environmental responsibility in their operations. In the context of a crisis revealing the importance of resilient business networks and a market that values business ethics and brand purpose, the incentives to perform along these lines are clearer than ever.

    Priya Naik, Ragini Menon and Hrishikesh Bhatt from Samhita elaborate on this approach in an article for Forbes India.

    Click here to read the article