[sustran] Re: Bikes in India

[Tamim Raad]

>Delivery-date: Tue, 12 May 1998 15:21:53 -0700
>Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 13:27:07 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Lee Henderson <lhenders at vcc.bc.ca>
>To: transit betenvi <BEST at sustainability.com>
>Subject: Re: Bikes in India
>Reply-To: BEST at sustainability.com
>Organization: BEST (http://www.sustainability.com/best)
>X-Sender: BEST at sustainability.com
>X-Reply-To: BEST at sustainability.com
>Error-To: scott at communicopia.bc.ca
>X-ListMember: raad at unixg.ubc.ca [BEST at sustainability.com]
>
>
>I saw this on the International Bicycle Fund Website
>http://www.ibike.org/index.htm
>============================================================
>
>Bicycle Promotion Among Women In Rural India 
>Mobility & Quality of Life 
>>From Literacy To Empowerment To Bicycles In Rural India 
>
>For years, fetching water for Mariamman of Siranjeni village was one of
>many dreary chores. When the village well dried up in summer, she had to
>trudge 2 km to a neighboring village to secure water.  Now fetching water
>is far easier; all she has to do is take her bicycle.  Like Mariamman,
>thousand of women in Pudukottai district in Tamil Nadu are using their
>bicycles, not just to fetch water but for a myriad utility trips. But it
>hasn't always been this way.
>
>It was novel literacy drive, launched in 1991, that has lead to 50,000
>women in the 3,000 villages of Pudukottai (370km from Madras, India) to
>learn to ride bicycles.  Originally, the scheme had four elements;
>literacy, arithmetic, awareness and application. Seeing an additional
>need, collector Sheela Rani Chungat added a fifth element -- mobility.
>These days Pudukottai women sing "we have learnt to cycle, brother/ and
>with it, we have turned the wheel of our lives, brother". As the song
>bears out, the results of Chungat's initiative have far exceeded
>expectations.
>
>In the harvest season, women now carry bundles of ripe stalk on a cycle,
>not on their heads. When the men work in the fields, their lunches are
>delivered to them by their wives on wheels. And sometimes, newly mobile
>mothers save their children long, tiring walks to and from the village.
>
>The cycle-training program started as a no-cost affair. Villagers lent one
>or two cycles. Initially classes were held after dark, helping the
>students to get over their initial shyness and reluctance.  "There were
>few people around to make fun of us when we fell down,"  recalls
>Mariamman. 
>
>When some women began showing off their success on their husbands' and
>brothers' cycles, the bug caught on. Next, the program coordinators
>arranged for bank loans to buy bikes. Still, some women have been unable
>to derive the fullest mileage from their recently acquired skills. Most do
>not have the money to buy their own cycles and their fathers, brothers and
>husbands, get first preference on family bikes. There are also
>family-imposed restrictions -- chores, sewing classes and primary health
>care are all right, but movies, cruising and fun outings are an absolute
>no-no.
>
>[Base on an article by Nirupama Subramanian, in "India Today".] 
>
>For details on this and other programs promoting bicycle transport write: 
>Laxmi Narain Modi, Exec.  Director., Nation Building Forum, 305 Bakshi
>House, 40-41 Nehru Place, New Dehli 110019, INDIA.
>

------------------
Tamim Raad
Point Grey RPO, Box 39150
Vancouver, British Columbia  V6R 4P1
CANADA
Tel: 1 (604) 739-2146
Email: raad at unixg.ubc.ca