“A toilet comes after a house”, says Suganya
After 45 minutes of a bus ride, I reached Musiri from Trichy city at 7 AM for my field visit with Milaap’s partner, GUARDIAN. Intended to meet Suganya, the leader of a JLG, I arrived at Vellur Sathiram village. Suganya’s in-laws’ house is at the roadside while her mother’s house is just a few steps behind that house near the canal. Her father-in-law informed me that she was at her mother’s place. He guided me the way and I reached there to meet her. She warmly welcomed me and offered me a chair to sit in the veranda. After finishing some remaining work in the kitchen, she joined me there for words.
Suganya, the mother of three lovely daughters, is married to Shivraj who works for a private company in Trichy city. The eldest daughter studies in 2nd standard while the younger one, in 1st standard of the local Government Primary School. The youngest girl is too small to attend a school. Suganya is a housewife. However, she wants to avail an enterprise loan to initiate her own tailoring micro-enterprise. She said, “The income of the household is insufficient, therefore I worry about my daughters’ education.” The total monthly household income is around Rs. 8,000 only.
As far as water and sanitation facilities are concerned in Suganya’s house, she has an individual pipeline connection at her door step. The water is supplied twice a day for four hours. She had availed a microloan of Rs. 10,000 for toilet construction from GUARDIAN. However, telling about the utilization of the loan amount Suganya said, “We’ve utilized the loan amount in the base formation of our new house.” After clearing her throat she added, “Before getting the loan, we had purchased the land behind our current house to make a new house of two-room set. Hence, we decided to use the loan amount in building the base of the house which would certainly have an installed toilet once completed.” Currently she lives in a single room house with an asbestos roof. Suganya says that ceiling of this house leaks in the rain and we have to cover things with plastic sheets in the house. She looked at the flowing canal opposite to the veranda and said, “Whenever, guests arrive our home we’ve to arrange their stay here in my mother’s house.” They have already invested around Rs. 40,000 in purchasing raw materials for further construction besides completing the base of the building. She said, “Constructing a house is pretty expensive affair, but we estimate the completion of house within Rs. 5 Lakhs.”
However, her family is still subjected to open defecation. She says that she accompanies her daughters on the field which is just few meters from their house. She said, “There are problems. I’ve to ignore the urge to defecate during night times because my husband doesn’t like to accompany in the night. I fear insects and thorns while my eldest daughter feels shy to defecate during day time.” Besides these everyday difficulties, Suganya is hopeful for her new house with an installed toilet. Her husband has applied for a housing loan from Cooperative bank. Nonetheless, currently the construction work is at halt because of monsoon. Suganya is determined to resume the work just after monsoon. The hope twinkled in her eyes and I waved her bye wishing luck for soon completion house.
Correction: Due to a data entry error by our field partner, the wrong identification of the group leader was uploaded at the time of funding the loan on our website. We are working closely with our field partner to eliminate such errors in the future. The error is deeply regretted.
