Gouravva forges a new life for herself

Gouravva Kamble is a 50 year old single mother from Katakbhavi, a small village in the Belgaum district of Karnataka. She is a former devadasi and has not received any formal education. The story behind this is that she has been the target of an age-old traditional cycle which involved dalit girl-children being forced by their parents to dedicate their lives to the deities in local temples. This rendered them unable to finish their school or compete for other jobs and also had a socially scarring impact. To free herself from this cycle and forge a new life for her family, Gouravva decided to start an animal husbandry. She lives with her two sons - her elder son works in the fields as a daily wage labourer and her younger son helps her around the house and in maintaining the animal husbandry. Gouravva took a loan of Rs. 18,000 from MASS(Mahila Abhivruddhi mattu Samrakshana Samsthe) a micro-financing field partner of Milaap working in the area. She bought a buffalo at Rs 26,000 clubbing her personal savings to the loan amount. She feeds the buffalo the dried leaves that she can gather up from the field she works in and the left-over food from the previous day. On an average, she is able to get 5 litres of milk from the buffalo everyday. She sells the milk to a nearby dairy at Rs 30 per litre. She also sells the dung from the buffalo once a year and earns a very modest income. Gouravva has been able to repay the loan and lead a comfortable life with the additional earnings from the buffalo rearing. Realising that animal husbandry is a good investment, she has taken multiple loans over the past couple of years and currently owns two buffaloes, two cows and four goats. The investment and her hard work has paid off and Gouravva no longer has to work in the agricultural fields everyday from dusk to dawn.