#2 | Deepa: Rural Women — Part I

By Soumya Mukund, Arpit Paurush and Dharmesh Ba

Short story:

Deepa is a 30-year-old married woman living in Tumkur with her husband, mother-in-law, and father-in-law. Their family occupation is agriculture, cattle rearing, and selling coconuts. However, cattle rearing is their most reliable source of income. Their agricultural land hosts a variety of crops such as ragi, paddy and others. However, the produce from the farm is consumed by the family themselves and they do not have a surplus to sell them due to uneven rainfall, inadequate irrigation system & shortage of fertile land.

One of the causes of inadequate irrigation is rocky soil and a shortage of groundwater.

Image credits: iStockPhoto

Family & Education:

• Deepa has completed PUC, and she had worked for three years at the Airtel office in Bangalore. She left the job because of the marriage and her new home lacks reliable public transportation to take up any new job.
• Lack of reliable transportation in the village poses a challenge for women to take up daily wage jobs in addition to their household chores.
• Deepa is looking forward to taking up tailoring classes along with other women in the community to stitch and sell readymade clothes on a van. Their lack of access to capital poises as a challenge to being their entrepreneurship journey.

[1] 
PUC: The pre-university course or pre-degree course (PUC or PDC) is an intermediate course (which is known as 10+2) of two years' duration, conducted by state education institutions or boards in India.

Income Streams:

• Deepa’s family owns an agricultural land on which they grow paddy, ragi, horse gram, moong daal during the monsoons. However, the crops grown serves only their own family due to inadequate irrigation systems and scarcity of groundwater. They also resell coconuts from a vendor to the village community.
• The family’s reliable and primary source of income is cattle rearing for daily survival. Buying a bag of fodder every three days is a challenging task for them due to the shortage of funds, and they tend to spend every penny very judiciously.
• The family’s total earnings from cattle milk are around Rs.30,000 (421.28$) per month. They get the payment of Rs.15,000 (210.62$) every 15 days, out of which Rs.15,000 is set aside for household expenditure, and the second payment of Rs15,000 gets deposited in the bank account.
• Deepa’s family saves money and gives the loan to the members of Sangha (group savings) on a rate of interest of 1% per month.
• Her father in law takes care of 50- 60 sheep, which also add to the family.

Conversations from the transcript:

S: How do you deal with financial emergencies?
D: We borrow money from someone. Once in 15 days, we get the payment for cattle milk. One payment is worth Rs. 15,000. It will be in the bank. Two bills will make Rs. 30,000. One bill will be in the bank. If there is an emergency, we will take the money from the bank and use it. The bill will keep getting debited into our account every month. We would have left around Rs.15,000 in the bank itself. That will keep generating interest. We will withdraw the money whenever there is a need. The immediate week another bill will fall into our account.

D: If any emergency arises in our Sangha, we will lend the money to whoever needs it.

Expenses:

• Grocery and fodder are significant expenses for Deepa’s family. She claims the total amount for groceries is around Rs. 2500 (35$) per month and for Fodder is Rs.1500 (21$) per month.
• Grocery shopping happens four times a month. They buy it every week on Monday due to the absence of a refrigerator in the house.
• A lot of money in Deepa’s house is spent on feeding the guests who visit the house from time to time.
• Deepa’s family has to spend each penny in the house very wisely, due to which the usage of gas in the house is minimal and occasional. They buy the cylinder only in three months as they prefer to cook food from the traditional firewood on mud chulha (earthen pot).
• The other expenses for the family on which they cannot negotiate are mobile, cable TV, electricity & water bills. Deepa’s family pays Rs. 250 (3.50$) each, for cable and electricity bill services, while for the water bill, they spend another Rs.100 (2.80$) per month.
• Deepa’s family tracks the money by noting down the expenses on a notebook. This notebook helps her to take financial decisions on a monthly basis.

Conversations from the transcript:

S: How do you keep track of expenses?
D: We note down the daily expenses. We note down the cost of each of the items we purchase.

S: How do you track each of the expenses?
D: Now, we sell milk from cattle. We had taken a loan. We have three cows. We will also spend on fodder. After deducting that, we pay Rs. 20 as savings to our Sangha. We pay Rs. 2,500 in a month for the bank loan. Now we make a note of how much we have to save in a day, whether it is Rs. 50, in such a way that by the end of the month, we can pay Rs. 2,500.

S: What other expenses do you have in a month apart from this?
D: Gas, mobile, TV, and small amounts of the current bill. The cable bill is constant in a month. It will come up to Rs. 250 in a month. The gas bill will be paid once in 2–3 months. She cooks simple dishes. If it is something out of the ordinary, we will use the gas for it.

S: Why don’t you cook food on gas?
D: If we cook using only gas, we will run out in just a month.

S: How do you manage cooking then?
D: We use firewood. We use coconut shells to heat water. For everything else, we use stuff from the field. The current bill comes to around Rs. 250. Inclusive of TV and the house.

S: What are your Groceries Expenses?
D: Grocery expense is Rs. 2,500 in a month. We but groceries every week Monday,
four times in a month as lot of visitors and relatives do come to our house. Water bill is about Rs.100 per month. We have an overhead tank; water is let out in taps, the panchayat will charge us every month. It will be around Rs. 200. They will take it from our taxes.

Bank account and cards:

• In Deepa’s family, all four members hold a bank account and debit cards, and they have a frequent deposit and withdrawal of money.
• Payment received by selling milk and coconut is deposited in the bank and withdrawn by using a debit card.
• Deepa’s husband carries all the cards, and he withdraws money once or twice in a month. However, Deepa also knows how to withdraw money from the ATM.
• Deepa’s mother and father in law cannot operate ATMs.
• The usage of the card in the family is limited to withdraw money. They don’t use the other services of the card and digital payment services such as net banking & mobile banking, though they are aware of such digital payment services.

Conversations from the transcript:

S: Do you own a bank account?
D: Yes, all 4 of us have bank accounts.

S: Where do you park your money?
D: We park our money in the bank. We have frequent deposits and withdrawals.

S: Do you have ATM cards?
D: Yes, we all have.

S: For what purpose do you use it?
D: Now, banks will not allow us to withdraw money without ATM cards. Earlier we could submit a challan and withdraw money, but now that is not accepted anymore. We have to use the ATM to withdraw money. Whatever the amount, we have to use the ATM. Even if it is for Rs. 100, we have to use the ATM. That is why everyone has an ATM card.

S: How often do you use it?
D: My husband will have the ATM cards. He uses it once or twice. I use the cards twice or thrice.

Bills and Utilities:

• Deepa’s husband pays water tax through cash at the panchayat over the counter.
• Cash is the king of the family. All bill payments and transactions happen through cash. For most of the services, the payment is made at a designated counter, while for certain services like cable bills, an agent arrives at the doorstep to collect the cash.

Conversations from the transcript:

S: Who pays the bills?
D: My Husband. He goes to Turuvekere on Sunday to pay these bills.

S: Have you heard of mobile and net banking?
D: Yes, we have, but we haven’t done any such thing.

S: How do you pay the insurance?
D: Whatever earnings I make in a month, I pay via cash. For insurance, we spend money through an agent. They will keep a record of it. When we pay the amount, they will give clearance and provide us with a LIC bond. There will be a bank exclusively for this.

This interview is broken into two parts. The second part of the interview talks about Deepa’s investments, loans, insurances, life goals and ambition.

Part II of the story

#2 | Deepa: Rural Women — Part II

Credits:

Interviewed and transcribed by
Soumya Mukund

Edited and published for Medium by
Dharmesh Ba & Arpit Paurush

Read our other research series:

About the research:

This documentation is a result of the in-person interview along with the participants’ consent. The interviews might be conducted in their native languages and translated to English in the best possible way to reach a large audience.

Disclaimer: The names and organisations in this documentation are masked to honour the privacy of the participant.

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