TRIBAL SELF HELP GROUP

 A Success Story of SGSY from Tribal Areas of Kanyakumari

Pechiparai Panchayat in Kanyakumari district is high in the Western Ghats. The Panchayat has a population of 2500 Kanikkar tribals living scattered in around 24 forest settlements. Spread around the huge Pechiparai reservoir, built around hundred years back, the settlements coexist with wild animals like elephants, tiger, bear, wild boar and other animals. Caught up between the traditional forest dependent life styles and modernism these tribals are in a transition.

With education reaching them they are now claiming for better facilities. One among them, S. Rajan, a post-graduate, is now the Panchayat President by virtue of the post being reserved for Scheduled Tribes. The new generation refuses to remain in their olden day stagnation.

It was a long pending demand of the Kanikkar living around the Pechiparai reservoir that they be given a mechanised boat. ' A century old demand, unmet so far' according to them. For the land locked settlements found it difficult to reach the outside when the dam was full. The children could not attend school and the sick could not be given medical help. By country boats it took more than two hours to ferry across. They made their demand to a team of visiting officers, taken there at the initiative of the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA).

Project Officer, DRDA Kanyakumari district agreed to consider the genuine demand under the newly launched Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY). Accordingly a Self Help Group of five members, required under the scheme, was formed and a grant of Rs. 90,000 released. An equal bank loan component was facilitated and a mechanised boat purchased. The five members were also given training in operation and maintenance. The loan was to be paid back through a period of five years.

Initially the group started ferrying passengers, which included workers going to the estates within the forests apart from the tribal people, and conducting trips for tourists coming to Pechiparai dam. On one side settlements in far flung areas could now reach out in no time and the group operating the service started earning a net profit of Rs. 10,000 a month. Most important was the help rendered to the school going children who could not attend school so far with inadequate facilities. But the group soon found that the regular ferrying of school children was costing them dear as more and more children started availing the facilities and their parents were unable to pay the money, abysmally poor as they were.

The 'Bee Self Help Group' , which operates the boat service approached the DRDA demanding travel concessions for the tribal school children. The matter is being taken up by DRDA at the appropriate levels of government. Meanwhile there is jubilation among the Kanikkar tribals.