When Soma Senapati sits to talk about her life story and stitches different moments, it unfolds as one of true grit and determination. Soma leads a producer’s group at a village near Manik Bazar in Bankura where she and her compatriots make Sal leaf plates and sell those for a living. It’s a role she has adapted to perfection. The SwitchON Foundation, a Kolkata, India-based NGO working on rural women entrepreneurship in Bengal finds Soma to be a perfect ambassador of their vision.
SwitchON’s commitment lies in advancing the socio-economic status of marginalised women, turning them into rural entrepreneurs who, in turn, bring more women under the fold of this vision by working together.
Soma, who is differently abled due to being diagnosed with the poliovirus, started making sal leaf plates only in November 2023 and entered into this business through a producer’s group in her village. She hasn’t looked back after that.
In this part of Bengal, many women collect sal leaves from nearby forests stitch them in the form of plates and sell them in the market. It is largely an unorganised sector with tremendous potential and can be tapped for rural women to create enterprises and become entrepreneurs beyond the livelihoods model.
This will lead them to escape poverty and employ others. SwitchON Foundation has read the system minutely since its inception.
Sumedha Kundal of SwitchON who has been involved in the implementation of this programme from the start says that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been done with the West Bengal Livelihood State Rural Mission (WBSRLM) to ensure that the rural entrepreneurship programme stands on a firm ground. “This has helped us procure machines for the rural entrepreneurs”, she tells us.
The leaf dicing machine stands right in the middle of the expansion and efficiency story of the sal plates and the women making it. Soma tells us that the ‘magic machine’ has reduced production time and increased output. The reason she calls it a magic machine is because it reduces the production time and this helps increase output: about 6,000 plates in 4 hours.
Senior Community Resource Person, Gita Mal has witnessed SwitchON’s efforts from the first day. Not only has she witnessed how the process has slowly expanded but how beyond the marketing, connection with buyers and profit margins, she has seen how the lives of marginalised women have transformed.
“The quality of life of all the women was abject and people were struggling to make ends meet and in this forested area this machine helps them to be economically independent”, she observes. Gita explains that the women used to pick up sal leaves and then weave them with sticks.
For every 1000 plates woven the women would get anything between Rs 150-200. Now after the arrival of the machine, the women earn anything between Rs 900-1000 and sometimes even more, adds Mal.
People agree with Gita Mal: with the help of SwitchON and Block authorities, successful marketing of the sal plates has happened. Women who would not previously venture out of their houses have been taken to different training programmes like how to market products better, among others.
“All the skills acquired from the training have helped these women boost their confidence. They are more articulate and express themselves better. They feel happy that they can step out and do so much”, says Gita.
But how did SwitchON manage to do this? Both Sumedha Kundal and Gita Mal agree that SwitchON reached out to different groups, analysed the problem and heard voices from the ground. She had no clue about packaging. SwitchON among other things also showed the women in the village how to go about it.
They also showed and explained the importance of labelling. That a product should stand out in the way it looks; something that was unknown to the women making the sal plates. Now, it has become an essential aspect of the entire plate production process. Thanks to SwitchON’s guidance, this basic yet crucial aspect of the production was instilled in the sal plate-making process.
SwitchON’s systematic approach to implementing its vision of empowering rural women has been of immense help. SwitchON’s systematic approach to implementing its vision of empowering rural women and making entrepreneurs out of them had an instant connection.
However, for that connection to be actualised, several important steps had to be taken. For this, first SwitchON went to the Block Administration level, then the Gram panchayats and finally proceeded with collaboration, training, and integrated marketing.
However, some problems remain. Soma tells us that the leaf dice machine needs repair and it has become risky to operate it since sometimes, a malfunction throws up problems, including short circuits within the machine system. Yet within all this, as we hear from Gita, “The aspiration is to do something more, to get producers groups together and move on to a higher plane” As Soma and her friends walk with SwitchON they hold on to this vision for the future and the promise of a much better life: a life in which their entrepreneurial dreams rides on the shoulders of the sal trees they are surrounded with.
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