HOME-BASED WORKER

HOME-BASED WORKERS AND STREET VENDORS

v     An all-India conference of NASVI was held in March, 2003. A national policy on street vendors has been drafted by a committee/task force, which has now been circulated by the GOI to all States.

v     Nidan, our partner organization working with street vendors, has formed six cooperatives, with a total of 3000 members. Of these, one for housing, and another for thrift and credit (with 1600 members) have been registered under the Bihar law for Thrift and Credit Cooperatives. Till now Rs.5,00,000/- has been lent to 162 members from the Cooperatives’ own funds. Thrift and Credit Cooperative members are also provided group insurance and medical insurance from LIC.

v     SHGs of hawkers and vendors number 463 with about 4700 members in Patna, Danapur and Vaishali.

v     Home based workers like jute mat weavers, leafplate makers have received recognition and have participated in international experience sharing programmes.

v     ADITHI is part of two international networks – Street Net, Home Workers World Wide, for street vendors, homebased producers, in which representatives of ADITHI were able to go to Brazil and meet home based producers from all over the world. Street vendors were able to go to Durban, South Africa to see street vendors there. An International workshop of street vendors was held at Patna.

v     ADITHI, through it’s projects with home-based workers supported by HWWW is developing a policy for home-based workers with the Government of Bihar and Jharkhand.

v     ADITHI held embroidery workshops and did a mapping study of “old” and “new” sujuni workers for Home Workers World Wide. ADITHI facilitated mapping and studies for leafplate, bamboo, rope in Jharkhand area (both horizontal and vertical) showing, at least in the leaf-plate case, 8 middlemen between the tribal women and consumers in Delhi.

v     We have conducted a study on sharecroppers, as a consequence of which our sharecroppers’ programme including home-based composts is being expanded to two new areas by HWWW and is getting better organized.

v     The Times of India newspaper has carried articles on home-based workers of Adithi on a regular basis. They have given considerable visibility to the workers and made people aware about their struggles. This has also generated a lot of interest among the people. The Government of Jharkhand was influenced by the articles.

v     A task force was set up by the Ministry of Urban Development Government of India to develop a policy for street vendors, which has now been done and circulated by the Ministry to all State Governments.

v     ADITHI envisages the formation of a federation of home-based workers, the first steps have been taken.

v     Mapping for Home Workers World Wide of home-based producers and efforts towards social security for them are being made (in Jharkhand, Bihar and Tamil Nadu)

v     Mapping –

·        This has been done with all the home-based workers in Sakra block of Bihar by Ramani, where it has been found that 12%-13% of the people are engaged in some kind of home-based work besides agriculture.

·        In a similar mapping done in Jarmundi block of Jharkhand State, it was found that 90% of the women (BPL) do some kind of home-based work (like broom making, leafplate making, bamboo weaving) besides agriculture.

·        Mapping has also been done with the home-based workers in Pranpur block of Katihar district.

·        REFLECT has been done with old Sujuni in Sakra block.

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