ANNEXES

Annex I. LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

Annex II. PROGRAMME

Annex III. LIST OF PAPERS

Annex IV. NABARD'S MICROFINANCE INITIATIVES FOR WOMEN IN FISHING COMMUNITIES

M.A. Upare, General Manager, NABARD, Mumbai, India

Introduction

The fisheries sector occupies an important place in the economy of India, as it is a significant source of food and protein, a major avenue for employment and a major export industry. India is the third largest producer of fish in the world and is second in inland fish production after China. India's share in the world production of fish increased from 3.2 percent in 1981 to 4.24 percent in 1999. The sector has also been providing employment for about 5.96 million full-time or part-time fishers.

India declared its maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in 1977. The country has a coastline of 8 041 km. The EEZ covers an area of 2.02 million km² with an annual resource potential estimate of 3.9 million tonnes.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report, 70 percent of people living in abject poverty are women, which is true of India. The assetless, i.e. those who do not have land, are the poorest category of the population. Fishers are among the poorest since they are both assetless and have to face the uncertainty and risks of their occupation.

Poverty is directly related to calorie intake. Women play a vital role in nutrition. The United Nations estimate that women account for over half the food produced in developing countries. They are involved in many activities directly related to the production of food. It is also a known fact that when women, especially among poor families, earn or prosper, they tend to spend more on food for their families, thereby leading to nutritional security. Thus women can be effective instruments in tackling poverty and creating broad-based economic growth.

Women and children in India make significant contributions to fishery activities. They are mainly involved in marketing, processing and net-making. In the inland sector, they are involved in capture, assisting in pond construction, management of ponds and feed preparation. About 25 percent of the labour force in pre-harvest activities, 60 percent in export marketing and 40 percent in internal marketing are women. However, their role has always remained neglected. Working conditions are poor and the wage rates received by women are comparatively low.

Studies on poverty in India unequivocally point to the primacy of rural poverty in terms of its incidence and its pervasive nature, which explains the urgency of adopting poverty alleviation in rural areas. Bringing a gender perspective to the process of development is emerging as important to ensure the equitable and sustainable development of women. In the last few years there has been global concern to bring women into mainstream economic activities so as to ensure quality and empowerment. To materialize the dream of the empowerment of women, it is essential to improve their access to credit and financial services, which form the mainstream of overall development. It is in this context that the role of NABARD and other financing institutions becomes important.

NABARD was set up with the mission of promoting sustainable and equitable agriculture and rural development through effective credit support, related services, institution building and other initiatives.

The corporate objectives of NABARD are the following.

• Enhance credit flow for rural development

• Strengthen microlevel planning/potential-linked credit plan

• Expand/diversify programmes in agriculture

• Provide credit support for high-technological projects and infrastructure development

• Help build up an efficient rural credit delivery system

• Facilitate development transfer of technologies

• Build up an effective rural communication system for information dissemination

• Assist rural credit institutions in developing women's resource development systems

NABARD supports and promotes agriculture and rural development, including fisheries. Its credit schemes for both farm and non-farm activities by way of refinance support to banks are gender neutral.

Credit support for fisheries activities

Financial institutions have played a major role in fisheries development by supporting the sector through institutional finance. NABARD has also been providing refinance for fisheries activities financed by various banks. As at 31 March 2003, NABARD's cumulative refinance disbursements for investment in fisheries activities stood at Rs7 455.5 million.

NABARD's perspective on the empowerment of women

The vast expansion of the rural credit system in India has increased the dependence on informal agents such as moneylenders. Although there are a considerable number of activities that could be undertaken by women, there are many difficulties in the access of credit for them.

NABARD has adopted multipronged strategies for addressing various constraints in the success of women entrepreneurship. Basically the strategies can be classified as: (i) addressing the capacity building needs of women; (ii) increasing the access of women to credit; and (iii) engineering an appropriate credit delivery system.

NABARD supports programmes such as the Rural Entrepreneur Development Programmes (REDPs) and Assistance to Rural Women in Non-farm Development (ARWIND) that take care of the capacity-building needs of women for both skill development and enterprise management. In developing entrepreneurial activity-oriented skills among unemployed rural women, NABARD assists NGOs and development agencies with good track records to conduct REDPs for those willing to set up small/microenterprises. The objective of REDPs is to create sustainable employment and income-generating opportunities in rural areas. To date, 106 676 participants - of whom about 5 percent are women - have been covered under 3 607 REDPs with a grant assistance of Rs137 million.

NABARD promotes and supports the promotion of other successful models for increasing credit outreach to women engaged in small business and microenterprises. These include the Oriental Bank of Commerce's Gramin Mahila Project, the Bangladesh Grameen Model and the Cauvery Grameena Bank Experiment. It also supports organizations such as the SEWA Bank, Rashtriya Gramin Vikas Nidhi (RGVN), RMK and FWWB for onlending to women entrepreneurs.

NABARD's microfinance initiatives

India has the largest network of bank branches in the world. The last four decades have witnessed a rapid growth in the country's banking network and, as a result, rural and semi-urban areas are today served by more than 150 000 retail credit outlets. Some of the research studies conducted by NABARD during the early 1980s showed that, despite an extremely wide network of rural bank branches implementing specific poverty alleviation programmes that sought to create self-employment opportunities through bank credit for almost two decades, a very large number of the poorest continued to remain outside the fold of the formal banking system. For women, time limitations generated by their overall responsibilities and low level of resources formed the key constraints to their full integration into the formal marketing and credit delivery systems. These studies gave signals that existing banking policies, systems and procedures and deposit and loan products were perhaps not most suited to meet the immediate needs of the very poor. What they really needed was better access to these services and products, rather than cheap subsidized credit.

While looking at the impressive growth of the formal credit system in expanding its outreach in terms of spread and depth, it would be pertinent to state that the task to be accomplished is greater than what has so far been achieved. The present paradigm of banking with the poor needs to change in order to conceive the poor as commercial prospects rather than as a high-cost, high-risk category in the banking portfolio. Some essential elements in the desired new paradigm are the following.

• There is a need for comprehensive banking services in addition to credit.

• Savings products and access to savings services are essential.

• There should be an arrangement to meet consumption needs in order to prevent diversion of resources from production activities.

• The credit needs of the poor are small, emergent, frequent and amalgamate both consumption and production purposes.

• The rate of interest is not the determinant for selection of the credit source.

• Collaterals are not a necessity, but options.

• Credit delivery at the door is easily possible at low costs.

• Socio-economic empowerment can help economic upward migration.

• Poor women, if financed, can contribute significantly to family welfare.

• Economic decisions for the poor are best left to them.

• A favourable environment can lead to the prudent exercise of such decisions.

The issues that need emphasis when looking at the supply side problems are: (i) the high transaction costs of expanding outreach to a very scattered client base; (ii) the higher risk costs because of the fluctuating success rates of rural farm and non-farm enterprises; (iii) inflexible systems and procedures for small clients; (iv) inadequate performance incentives for staff in rural branches; and (v) rural credit policies prone to unfriendly political influences. Economic hardships as a factor are not a sufficient condition for initiating the process of organization, especially among women. It is in this perspective that the role of voluntary agencies and NGOs can be considered in organizing the poor. Voluntary agencies, NGOs with good track records and credentials, socially committed individuals and organizations and even formal institutions, farmers' clubs and branch managers of banks could take the initiative in forming SHGs. SHGs can also be formed without the intervention of any of the above and on the initiative of members themselves. An SHG is a group of about 20 people from a homogeneous class, who come together to address their common problems.

People's participation in credit delivery and the recovery and linking of formal credit institutions to borrowers through SHGs have been recognized as supplementary mechanisms for providing support to the rural poor such as landless marginal farmers/agriculture labourers and women. The emphasis therefore is on improving the access of the poor to microfinance rather than microcredit. Microfinance can be defined as the "provision of thrift, credit and other financial services and products of very small amounts to the poor in rural, semi-urban or urban areas to enable them to raise their income levels and improve their living standards".

Linkage with banks

An SHG may open a savings bank account soon after its formation. Depending on the inputs that go into the building of the SHGs, the group processes and functional stabilization normally take a period of about six months. The sanction of the loan can generally be considered after six months. When an SHG avails itself of a bank loan, the linkage is established.

Linkage models

NABARD developed the SHG-bank linkage model as the core strategy used by the banking system in India in increasing outreach to the poorest who were hitherto being bypassed. Three models of SHG-bank linkages have evolved over time.

• Model 1. Directly linked to SHGs without the intervention/facilitation of NGOs

• Model 2. Directly linked to SHGs with the NGO acting as facilitator

• Model 3. Indirectly linked to SHGs through NGOs for onlending

NABARD's involvement in promoting microfinance through the concept of SHGs started in 1987, with a sanction of Rs1 million as grant assistance from its Research and Development Fund to the Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency (MYRADA), an NGO that provides seed money to the Credit Management Groups (CMGs) that it promotes. The objective of providing grant assistance was to facilitate building up a thrift fund and aiding the members of the CMGs with margin money to borrow from the formal credit system. The success of this experiment prompted the launching of the pilot project in 1992 for linking 500 SHGs with banks. The SHG linkage programme is considered to be a supplementary credit delivery mechanism. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 1996 included financing to SHGs as a mainstream activity of banks under their priority sector lending. The Government of India bestowed national priority to the programme through its recognition in the Union Budget of 1999.

The highlights of the SHG-bank linkage programme as at 31 March 2003 are as follows.

• More than 11 million poor households have gained access to the formal banking system through the SHG-bank linkage programme. Cumulatively, 703 145 SHGs are now credit linked with different banks.

• Total loans disbursed to SHGs stood at Rs1 955.3 million (US$407 million), against which refinance availed of by banks from NABARD stood at Rs1 419.7 million (US$296 million).

• The social intermediation for forming and nurturing SHGs is today handled not only by a large number of NGOs but also by several community-based organizations such as farmers' clubs, local bodies, field-level workers of governmental agencies and even bank staff.

Other highlights are the following.

• More than 90 percent of SHGs have exclusively women members.

• Repayment of bank loans on time was above 95 percent from SHG members.

• The significant success of the programme was thanks to the active involvement of more than 2 500 NGOs.

• Over 23 000 branches of 500 banks are involved and over 500 districts in 30 states and Union Territories.

• Revolving fund assistance (RFA) of Rs180 million (US$3.75 million) was granted to 29 NGOs, SHG federations and credit unions for onlending to SHGs and to build their financial intermediation capacities.

• Over 10 000 bank officials, including faculty members of training establishments of banks, were trained in microfinance during 2002-2003.

• Cumulatively, over 50 000 bank officers and 1 200 faculty members of training colleges of banks have been trained by NABARD.

• Cumulatively, about 10 000 participants from lesser-experienced NGOs have been trained through 375 training programmes by NABARD in association with experienced NGOs.

Microfinance development fund (MDF)

Considering the need for upscaling microfinance interventions in the country, an MDF has been set up in NABARD through initial contributions aggregating approximately US$20 million from RBI, 11 public sector commercial banks and NABARD. NABARD has further contributed Rs60 million from its surpluses to the fund. The broad objective of the Fund is to support the provision, development and expansion of financial services to the rural poor, particularly women and vulnerable sections bypassed by the formal financial system. The specific objectives include taking appropriate measures for scaling up SHG-bank linkage programmes and facilitating the development of other players in the microfinance sector.

Recommendations

• Access to credit alone is not enough to ensure empowerment of the rural poor. Microcredit is more effective in combination with other social interventions. For this purpose, the wide range of grassroots experience available in the region should be relied upon and the need for specific complementary interventions that are essential be identified to address the broader structural causes of poverty.

• Since other forms of social support are prerequisites to building further upon the success of microcredit, different approaches ranging from short-term cost-efficiency of "credit only" models to alternative models that integrate peer lending with social mobilization, technology, training, savings, education and skill enhancement should be assessed and their suitability determined in different contexts.

• At the policy level, appropriate measures should be taken to give microfinance institutions the necessary legal status to operate as financial institutions of the poor.

• The design of microcredit programmes should: (i) focus on organizing the rural poor in feasible entrepreneurial activities; (ii) adopt simplified lending procedures to enhance accessibility of the poor; (iii) include vertical and horizontal linkages to ensure regular monitoring and accountability; (iv) evolve a built-in mechanism to exert community pressure for optimal credit utilization; (v) ensure flexibility to cater for varied entrepreneurial requirements under local conditions; and (vi) ensure technological development and marketing services for the products of loan-financed operations.

• As a major element of poverty reduction strategies, the evaluation of microcredit programmes should go beyond financial indicators and repayment/disbursement rates. Evaluations should focus more on social and gender impacts with more reliable data. The objectives should be to include identifying the strengths, weaknesses and needs of the poor to improve programme design.

• Since women constitute the large majority of microcredit programme participants, programme impact on women's status and gender equity is an important area of concern. Countries should explore the relevant aspects of gender equity and economic status of women, e.g. how microcredit contributes to the workload of women and increases their dual burden of productive and reproductive work; whether women control the earned income and how they use it; whether household members, irrespective of age and sex, benefit equitably from increased incomes; and whether credit acts as an entry point to strengthen women's networks and mobility, increase their knowledge and self-confidence, and enhance their status in their households.

• Rural credit programmes should consider income protection strategies as an important complement to income promotion measures. For this purpose, the programme design should introduce greater flexibility in the provision of financial services, e.g. consumption loans, savings, insurance schemes and other mechanisms to reduce the vulnerability of the rural poor.

• In view of the limited impact of existing rural credit programmes on the vulnerable poor, the underlying causes of their failures should be analysed. More specifically, this analysis should address the issue of whether the limited impact is an outcome of programme failure, or whether credit is not the way out of poverty for specific groups.

• The focus of rural credit programmes should be gradually shifted towards entrepreneurship development rather than financing survival activities that are more opportunistic and lead to short-term income increases. For this purpose, repeat loans should be directed more towards capital investments, technological improvements and capacity building of the poor rather than sustained increases in income.

• To ensure sustainability, rural credit programmes should be made economically viable. For this purpose, programme operations should be efficient to keep the costs of lending low and the credit costs should be adequate to cover administrative and financial costs without jeopardizing the accessibility of the programme for the poor.

• Where it is not feasible to recover all the costs associated with credit disbursement to the rural poor (e.g. monitoring, training and technical assistance, other pre- and post-loan assistance and social mobilization), governments should accept the cost of outreach to the poor as an important social and economic investment.

• The government should earmark adequate financial resources for lending to poor borrowers and undertake an information campaign, in collaboration with relevant institutions, to create awareness among the poor as to the availability and utilization of credit and a greater understanding of policies, programmes and procedures relating to microfinance operations.

• Microfinance institutions should design appropriate training programmes for their staff to develop a mutually beneficial culture and relationship. Efforts should also include the building of effective communication between policy-makers and the poor.

Annex V. GENDER IN MARINE FISHERIES: SOME REFLECTIONS

V. Vivekanandan, Chief Executive, SIFFS

The gendered division of labour

A gendered division of labour is to be found in all traditional occupations. However, the gendered division of labour in marine fisheries is quite extreme, rigid and near universal. While local culture, economic situation and technology have changed and varied the gender-based division of labour in most occupations, it remains a constant in marine fisheries more or less throughout the world^[1]. It is a feature even of "modern" and industrial fisheries. That men go to sea and women do not is generally taken for granted and not disputed. A large number of taboos govern this division of labour, including the belief in many cultures that women on a fishing boat bring bad luck. In India, where fishing is a caste-based occupation, the beliefs and norms that govern fishing are automatically passed on from generation to generation without much change. However, there are subtle variations in beliefs and practices, even within the same caste. For example, in southern Trivandrum, Christian Mukkuva women never set foot on a fishing craft while, in northern Trivandrum, they are taken for joy rides at sea during Christmas and the New Year.

Interestingly, this gendered division also seems to hold good for inland fishing, but there are many exceptions where women are involved in fishing in rivers and backwaters. When staying with a fishing family in southern Thailand, the author noticed that the lady of the house disappeared for a while. She subsequently reappeared with crabs for dinner - she had gone fishing in the mangrove area and taken out crabs from the traps the family had set up in certain locations. In the Coringa mangrove area in the Godavari delta, fishing is a family enterprise with the whole family moving around for months in a "shoe dhoni" - a large shoe-shaped canoe.

Women's roles and occupations

There is considerable variation in women's roles in the economic life of fishing communities, which vary from region to region and community to community. In certain communities and areas women hardly take part in fishery-based activities, while in others they take care of almost all tasks other than fishing itself. Some examples are given below that attempt to illustrate these diversities.

In Kasargode, the northernmost district of Kerala, the catch of each boat is not sold collectively as in most places, but shared among the crew. Wives take over their husbands' share of the catch, process the fish and then take it to the market for sale. Thus fishing is a family enterprise where the wife takes over once the catch comes to the shore. However, in Trivandrum, Kerala's southernmost district, the wife of a fisherman cannot directly access her husband's catch since the intermediary has rights over it. If she is a fish vendor, she will have to buy fish in the auction conducted by the intermediary in competition with other vendors and merchants. While in Kasargode fishing and fish vending are composite family businesses, in Trivandrum fishing and fish vending are two different businesses with separate incomes accruing to the husband and wife.

In Andhra's Prakasam district, women from the Palle community concentrate on agriculture (as wage labour or managing their own plots for cultivation) while men go fishing. Pattapu, the other fishing caste that inhabits the same coast, used to be an exclusive fishing community but, in recent years, has begun to follow the example set by the Palles.

If fishermen from certain communities are known for specialized fishing skills, so are the women. The fisherwomen of Kanyakumari and parts of Trivandrum have long been known for their net-making skills. Since drift netting was popularized in Goa many years ago by Trivandrum fishermen, Goan fishermen used to place orders for gillnets with the Trivandrum fisherwomen. This was partly a tribute to the women's skills and partly because of a superstitious belief that nets made by Trivandrum fisherwomen caught more fish.

The control that women have over finances varies considerably, although it is significant in most fishing communities. Given that men are away at sea, it automatically falls upon women to manage the finances. In some communities it is often they who arrange loans for buying fishing equipment. Men in many communities are quite irresponsible regarding financial matters. They are happy to hand over the cash and leave the entire burden of managing household expenditures to the women. All men want is their pocket money for drinking, etc.

The roles and occupations of women in fishing communities are consequently varied and not easy to generalize. What men do is entirely predictable but women's roles need to be understood in each specific location. While local culture and religious beliefs may have a role to play, in the final analysis, the scale of fishing, the species composition, level of dispersal of catches, distance from markets and transport facilities all have a bearing on the role played by women in post-harvest activities. This further indicates the dangers of coming up with gross generalizations about women's roles and prescriptions for intervention.

Modernization and women

The modernization of fisheries over the last four decades has essentially reduced women's role in the fishing industry in many ways and has been gender biased. Examples are given below.

• The mechanization of fishing has led to the concentration of fish landings in the harbours, the displacement of women from fish vending and the takeover of trade by male merchants.

• Some women who have no option other than fish vending to sustain their families now travel long distances in search of fish and face many hardships.

• The large seafood export processing industry has provided new opportunities for women's employment, but only women from certain pockets can use these opportunities, which have also become available for women from outside the fishing communities. Moreover, the export-oriented production-cum-processing sector has effectively transformed women from an independent self-employed status to that of wage earners having to do back-breaking menial tasks far away from home.

• Improved transportation and infrastructure have meant that the proportion of dried fish has declined considerably (e.g. in Kerala from two-thirds to just 10 percent of landings), reducing women's opportunities in village-level processing activities.

• The large-scale migration of men where traditional fishermen have not been able to cope with the unfair competition from trawlers has disrupted family life and put new burdens on women (e.g. 68 percent of fishermen in the Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh were involved in distress migration in 2002 for employment outside the district and state).

• The coming of net-making machines has displaced large numbers of women from net-making. One factory near Nagercoil displaced at least 1 000 women in the Kanyakumari district in 1980.

While some of these changes are perhaps inevitable, it is important to note that the decline of women's traditional roles has taken place in the fishing sector as a result of market forces and the inability of planners, administrators and scientists to understand the implications of new developments and technologies.

Annex VI. CREDIT ASSISTANCE TO FISHERWOMEN: THE FWWB EXPERIENCE

Vijaylakshmi Das, Chief Executive and Meera Sundarajan, Senior Programme Officer

Introduction

The role of women in fisheries, as in agriculture, is often under-represented since patriarchal frameworks for analysis ignore these so-called "minor players" who are not actively or visibly involved in the production process. Fishing, especially coastal fisheries, as an occupation is associated with men. Anthropological studies of fishing communities along the southern coast of India show that in the sexual division of labour, women have been denied entry to the fishing occupation through various forms of socially imposed barriers. The participation of women in fisheries is therefore restricted to the processing or management of the catch.

Women's role in post-harvest operations such as fish processing and marketing has been a traditional one (similar to cooking and child care). However, it must be noted that women have always remained small players in the entire fisheries economy, in that their scale of operation and market access have been limited, usually consisting of areas no further than nearby towns and cities. With the increasing centralization of coastal fisheries, women have been marginalized, resorting to selling fish to supplement the family income.

Problems of women involved in the fish vending trade

The problems of women in fishing communities involved in selling fish are similar to those of most poor women.

• Lack of assets. While agrarian families can view land as an asset, fishing families can boast only of their craft and gear as primary assets. As these are associated with the production process, the access of women to their use is almost nil and control does not exist.

• Non-availability of working capital. The lack of assets manifests itself in the lack of capital for investment in the fishing trade. Most women are dependent on external sources of credit. This is a typical characteristic of small fish vendors, the majority of whom are dependent on non-institutional sources of credit.

• Limited market access. Most women involved in the fishing vending trade are limited by lack of adequate transportation facilities. Public transport is often the only means of transport available and is not easily accessible (because of the fish the women carry), meaning that they have to walk with a head load of fish or invest in hiring transport that in turn cuts into the cost of the trade.

• Access to ice. This is a vital component in the fish trade since it helps to ensure that women can sell at competitive prices and avoid distress sales. Access to ice is now easier with increasing number of ice plants along the coast, but for small players selling limited quantities of fish, it is an investment that is very carefully made.

It is significant to note that women do not have the assets involved in the production process and nor do they have control over assets related to post-harvest operations, such as transport and ice.

Development interventions in fisheries

Development assistance to fishing communities has been primarily to aid the production process, i.e. technology transfer for improved craft and gear. Fisheries in India are part of the agriculture sector (clubbed with livestock and hunter-gatherer categories). Data that exist on fisheries relate mainly to catch figures and some gross data on craft and gear. More recent census data may have some estimates of fishing households and the number of active fishermen. Rarely are fisherwomen mentioned. Credit support and other development programmes have therefore been to improve access to means of production. The target is essentially male. Although international programmes such as the BOBP have addressed the question of women's role in fisheries, there has been no follow-up action with respect to these interventions.

In addition to these externally formulated efforts, there have been indigenous fishers' efforts to organize themselves in the form of unions. In the state of Kerala, fishermen were organized in the 1970s by church-based interventions into groups which federated themselves at the district level and formed the apex body SIFFS. Despite these efforts, women's needs in fisheries remained a little addressed area particularly when compared with their counterparts in the agrarian sector.

Credit needs of women involved in the fisheries sector

Microfinance as an intervention for women in the fisheries sector as against agrarian societies (where poor women usually work as wage labourers) holds considerable promise as most women are already involved in microenterprises and almost all have the felt need of lack of adequate working capital resulting in dependence on non-institutional sources of credit. Their credit needs are similar to those of other self-employed women such as vegetable vendors, as described below.

• Credit needs vary with the scale of operation. Head loaders who service inland villages and local village markets require smaller amounts of credit when compared with middle-level fish vendors who are women accessing suburban and urban fish markets. Head loaders do not get paid on a daily basis (payment is by households on a weekly/monthly basis) while middle-level fish vendors receive a daily payment but spend a considerable amount on transport and ice. Women involved in dry fish processing require much higher amounts than the former two categories.

• Credit requirements are seasonal. Landings vary with seasons. It is only during glut landing seasons that women are actively involved in the business. Credit delivery mechanisms must cater for this need.

• Repayment schedules need to be frequent. Repayment schedules should enable women to repay in small amounts. Door to door collection of instalments may help on a daily basis since women coming back in the evenings from their markets are immediately involved in cooking and other household activities.

FWWB assistance to women in fisheries

FWWB assistance to fisherwomen took place primarily in the state of Kerala through SNVF, part of the TDFF.

SNVF started its activities in 1992 and 1993 following the cooperative model (although individual societies were not registered as cooperatives) with Rs25 per member per month as compulsory minimum savings. The credit assistance provided to members was derived from internal loans from savings, bank linkages and RMK.

As an organization, SNVF catered for the primary needs of women involved in the fish vending business by providing them with much-needed working capital assistance for their small businesses. Given the fact that most small-scale fishing families are dependent to a certain extent on women's incomes, microfinance assistance is a critical intervention since it helps women avoid private moneylenders who charge exorbitant interest rates. Within a few years of inception women's societies far outnumbered those of men (there were 38 women's societies at one point as against 22 men's societies) and the board of TDFF reorganized itself to consist of 12 members with equal representations of men and women.

Today the organization provides working capital assistance to individuals at an 18 percent interest. Rs2 000-5 000 are given, repayable over a period of 12 months (this is the most commonly availed amount and the group sanctions the loan to the individual based on the scale of operation that is known to all). A Rs7 500-10 000 loan is repayable in 18 months (this is often used by women involved in fish processing). Repayment is made on a daily basis with staff going from door to door and collecting instalments.

However, despite the successful loan programme that had support from organizations such as the State Bank of Travancore, RMK and FWWB, there were certain problems that women faced within the TDFF, which are described below.

• Women's interests were lower in the priority of the federation and restricted to the last items on the agenda at meetings.

• The women's federation had a similar status to that of women in general - it was also essentially assetless, with only the right to share TDFF assets (such as buildings).

• Leadership at the top was restricted to males and all decisions were taken by men (there has only been one instance of a woman being the treasurer in the TDFF).

• Female leadership, whenever it questioned decisions taken by men on the board, was dismissed with the concerned individuals getting the label of being "troublemakers".

• Female leadership and women's interests were manipulated by male interests within the organization for its own ends.

FWWB for its part provided small working capital assistance to the SNVF on two occasions, which was repaid.

In 1995 FWWB disbursed to TDFF loan assistance of Rs2.2 million against a credit line of Rs7.5 million for an ice plant and boat repair centre. This loan was extended at a 12 percent interest rate for a period of five years with quarterly repayments. The project proposed by TDFF was called Gramadeepam and was aimed at self-reliance of people and organizations through the creation of employment opportunities. Its objective was the socio-economic development of fish workers by improving production and facilitating the acquisition of necessary fishing requisites.

It was proposed that the ice plant would help women by selling them ice on a priority basis, thereby fulfilling their felt need for ice and helping them earn an income by selling it outside. The land around and adjacent to the ice plant was proposed as a boat-building yard. The decision to procure the ice plant was made by men on the TDFF board. While women on the board may or may not have been aware of the decision, one point was clear - the ice plant was definitely not women's felt need since the smallness of their operations did not warrant such a large asset. In fact, when viewed against the need for working capital assistance, the latter was felt to be the stronger need. The federation went on to purchase the asset using part of the loan amount from FWWB. However, since the asset was already encumbered, the liabilities were also transferred to TDFF with the purchase.

During a monitoring visit by FWWB it transpired that the community assets as set out in the agreement were not transferred in the name of SNVF. As for the signatories to the loan agreement - the CEO was asked to go on leave by the board of TDFF and the coordinator of SNVF was suspended. FWWB needed an additional guarantee from TDFF for disbursal of the second instalment of the loan.

The organization at this time was facing considerable tension over its leadership and there were discussions going on to separate the men and women's organizations as two entities. FWWB asked TDFF to divide the assets equally between them. However, this could not be done and there was a great deal of confusion. The ice plant was transferred to the women. But since the asset was already encumbered and after expenses for renovation of the plant, the loan from FWWB could not be repaid. During this period of tension, an outstanding amount of Rs.9 million still had to be paid to RMK.

SNVF as an independent organization began to face a number of problems.

• It was devoid of assets.

• It was encumbered with loans.

• When SNVF approached the parent organization for help in repayment, it found that it would involve relinquishing the rights of usage of certain common assets (since TDFF proposed to rent out these assets to help in repayment). Also at stake were staff interests. Funds obtained from a foreign funding agency for staff salaries and training were used to clear outstanding debts.

• As far as the credit programme was concerned, the split resulted in men influencing their wives and other relatives not to repay loans that they had taken. With limited staff strength and the large number of defaulters, the credit programme suffered dramatically.

Today the organization has emerged from its earlier tensions and has a membership of nearly 2 500 with a loan programme assisted by SIFFS and the Kerala State Back Ward Classes Development Corporation. One of the strong points of the organization are, that as a people's group, the staff belong to the same community and have stayed with the organization despite its problems. Where grassroots organizations foundered, staff drew on their personal rapport and brought them back into the fold.

Nevertheless, the experience of FWWB in the TDFF/SNVF programme brings to light the following concerns.

• How committed are organically formed people's organizations to women's concerns? While they definitely structure existing programmes around felt needs, do existing gender relations also find reflection in the organization?

• Has credit assistance to the fisheries sector been genuinely able to cater for the needs of women in it?

• Does large credit support for asset creation for women result in their being sidelined? Although the organization repaid the smaller amounts lent by FWWB earlier, when it came to funding for asset creation, was it going to benefit women directly?

• The general feeling of distaste that emerged from the TDFF/SNVF split created an idea that involving women was the root cause of the problems. Is it not possible for men and women to find equal representation physically and in spirit in such organizations?

• The importance of good female leadership - how critical is it in helping the interests of women's organizations?

With FWWB at present considering the possibility of helping SNVF in institution building, it imposes the question as to whether microfinance as an intervention alone is sufficient to empower women. The SNVF experience has been a collective reflection of the individual cases existing in India. Women have been historically denied access and control over productive resources. Microfinance has enabled them to access credit easily but the question of control remains.

To conclude it can be said that while microfinance assistance definitely serves as an access mechanism for women to enter the economic sphere, control over productive assets and other issues relating to women's empowerment have not been touched upon. The fact that SNVF has been able to continue despite the separation shows that microfinance increases people's stakes in being together and contributes to strong grassroots-level institutions. However, the vital question that needs to be answered is whether these institutions can transform themselves into agents for the empowerment of women.

Annex VII. APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGIES FOR WOMEN IN FISHING COMMUNITIES IN INDIA

Appropriate fishery-based income-generating activities and microenterprises that can be taken up by interested women, singly or as a group, cover production, value-added processing and services. A few agriculture-based activities have also been included here as alternatives.

Whenever possible, suitable locations, estimated cost, the number of women required to undertake the activity, the required training activities and linkages with appropriate institutions have been identified. It must be stressed, however, that the information presented in this annex still needs to be further verified and adapted to account for location-specific contexts and variations. Estimated costs, for example, are indicative in nature and vary according to local conditions.

1. Mariculture

2. Aquaculture

3. Fish and fishery product processing

4. Services

5. Agriculture