Drishtee Foundation empowering women with sustainable business models in rural India

By Ritu Jha-

Drishtee Foundation USA, a non-profit organization that enables village women entrepreneurs by helping them develop and implement sustainable business models, brought in other successful non-profits and people supporting women to San Ramon in California on October 16, where they shared their work, the challenges they face, and what more needs to be done.

The host, Niharika Srivastav, president of Drishtee Foundation USA, a subsidiary of Drishtee India, who has been volunteering for the past four years and is now fully dedicated to supporting rural women in India, highlighted Drishtee and how it has helped 6,500 villages in the country in the past 25 years.

“We offer financial support and enable rural women with various skills including art and design-based skills,” Srivastav said about Drishtee which has a presence in 20 Indian states as well as in other countries.

However, compared to the other states, she said, “We have a good presence in Assam as well and are thriving there. Due to a matriarchal society, we grew very fast in Assam compared to other states.

Srivastav who was in India last month to witness and to have in-person experience about Drishtee, said that she visited several cities and villages near Bhagalpur in Bihar. “In Bhagalpur, Drishtee has been working for quite some time. We have trained and helped women form micro-enterprises. Each unit has eight to nine women, and we are helping them scale up and providing machinery to them. We are helping them manage their finances as well,” Srivastav shared, adding, “They are in textile, and garments which are exported to Japan. Whether it is silk, T-shirts, or sportswear. We have a brand called Rangoli which is operated by women. It produces clothes exclusively for women.”

Sharing about the challenges in rural Bihar, Srivastav said that finding the right persons for the job is the biggest hurdle as young people migrate to cities for work. “We have our employees in these villages, however, the challenge is it’s hard to find young people and they are not very keen on living in the villages and this is a problem that we are facing. Women are there with whom we work and we want to help, but finding the right talent is tough.”

She says that helping women will stop local migration and if women can earn, the men might stay back. “If we make this project lucrative for village youth, they will find a good reason to stay back but not all are motivated.”

Asked what Drishtee is doing to stop youth from migrating out of the villages, Srivastav said Drishtee is working on making business sustainable. “Youth who have studied rural development, get drawn to the villages and those are the people Drishtee hires, like people from Tata Institute of Social Sciences and IIT Kharagpur. We also go to different areas to tap into the local talent there.”

When asked about how they get village land to run their programs, she said, “We rent the land and we get monetary support from Greater Impact Foundation, MetLife Foundation and we are getting donations from the Indian diaspora.”

Srivastav also hosted a panel comprising various non-profit organizations, community advocates, and corporations. She told indica: “I feel all the non-profits are eventually doing something good and solving some problem, and the objective is to see how we can make this world a better place.”

Each speaker on the panel — moderated by Pari Vijay — shed light on their work and how they are helping to uplift the marginalized communities in India. “Kerala is so developed, but there are tribal areas where the people’s voices are still not heard,” Thampy Antony, an Indian-American film actor, writer, activist, and producer said.

Antony, the keynote speaker, spoke about his movie Papilio Buddha (2013) in which he acted. The film deals with tribals and how they embrace Buddhism to escape from caste oppression. “In India, no one appreciated it, but the film was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival.”

When asked whether the government is supporting the marginalized communities, Antony, a native of Kottayam district in Kerala, agreed and said, “The government is, but 50% of the financial aid does not reach them due to middlemen.”

Asked what needs to be done, he said, “We have to work with associations and concentrate and focus more on empowering women. They are the ones raising the family, not men. The problem in India is that women are not getting proper education and information. We have to educate them, and programs like the ones Drishtee runs can play a pivotal role in that.”

Chithra Rajagopalan, the board president of Blossom Projects, believes education is an investment that no one can take away from you. She echoed Antony’s statement that in Kerala, the dropout rate for girls in the Dalit community is very high. “Our goal at Blossom is to give that second chance to such kids and to raise awareness that there is a problem. India abolished the caste system many years ago but a large section of the community still has to face caste discrimination.”

“We have impacted 1,500 students and graduated from high school. The students who are coming to us are victims of sexual and physical abuse, and they require customized love and care,” Rajagopalan said. Sharing her own story, she said, “Even though my parents were educated, they were not in favor of allowing me to opt for higher education, instead they said why do you want to take up MBA, you have to get married and settle down.”

Hrishikesh Sathawane, CMO at SproutsAI, shared his story about the time he and his partner decided to wed in his village, “The goal was to break that LGBT mental barrier,” Sathawane said, adding that soon after that, many others broke that barrier. “There is a barrier in people’s mind that gay marriage is not possible in India.”

Talking about the girls who have to suppress their dreams, Sathawane said he knows many families that even after the girls are selected for reputed academic institutions like the IIT, are put under pressure and unfortunately are not allowed to leave the village.

“Even though you are here in the U.S., you can bring change in rural parts of India by taking action and breaking the social barriers,” he said. “Each of you can take an active part in the process, and once these barriers come down, transformation will inevitably follow.”

Akshaya Patra Foundation Vice President, Development (West), Geeta Kulkarni, said that when they started the program, 90% of boys and just 10% of girls attended the schools. Sharing her own experience on how the poor families responded when she asked them to send their daughters to school in Uttar Pradesh, she said: “The families used to say why send her to school, we will get her married to a rich family. I had to convince them about getting out of the cycle of poverty, and this can be done only if you educate the girls. We believe in women’s empowerment and have adopted 140 villages where only women are given employment. For example, in Barsana in UP, women do most of the work, even security guards are all women,” Kulkarni said.

Sponsor of the event, Sunny Menon, a community leader who provides consulting and advisory services at RiverLog Software, when asked how technology can help benefit and play a role in India, said, “In India, even if you do not have food to eat, he/she has a mobile in hand.” He believes, “if we leverage technology like AI, it can work wonders but it also could also create a havoc. Farmers are now getting attached to technology; however, they are exposed to things they should not….”

Menon says the Indian government is taking action to promote education but there are bigger problems than that, like the gender issues in villages. “We do not want to confuse villagers on gender issues, we should look at infrastructure and sustainability in villages.”

He emphasized on strong corporate support for Drishtee, noting that several companies are committed, and expressed his personal support for Drishtee, highlighting its dedicated efforts to build infrastructure in rural India.

 If you would like to learn more about Drishtee, visit drishtee.org