Khariar is a small town in the district of Nuapada in Orissa. It was my part of the field visit to meet Maa Tarini self-help group who had almost three months back availed the solar energy loan facilities form Milaap. The village where the group lives is around 10 kilometers from the town. The group leader Ranjita had already assembled the Milaap solar energy borrowers of her group at her place for the meeting. Ranjita is a housewife and her husband a school teacher. As per the women, they grow vegetables, cereals and pulses in addition to paddy. Due to non-availability of irrigation facilities they are able to grow only one crop of paddy in a year. While there are electricity connections in the villages the supply of power is not reliable. Most of the times there are frequent and long power cuts which affect their household work and business related works badly. This was also the reason why they had approached Milaap field partner for the solar lanterns. They have good experience in using the solar energy, which has eased their problems to an extent. The households in the villages don’t have water supplies to their homes and use a public tap for water or well. They have been using cloths for filtering the water as the water available in the village is not very safe to drink without purification. As they enquired about me what other facilities are available for them through my organization, I told them how in various ways Milaap has been helping the underprivileged people in making their lives better with the help of Milaap field partners and gave them an insight into various other loan products available through Milaap which can help them in enterprise development, education and sanitation. Ranjita also asked me if I can be of help to her in getting the funds for repairing her house as she wants to have a concrete floor which requires less maintenance instead of a mud floor. I told her that our field partner has already been running such schemes and when they are done with the repayment of the first loan, they always can apply for the new loan through our field partner.
Ranjita and Group
