THE WOMEN OF KURAYUR VILLAGE

Sze Chun Chan (JC), New York City
Aimee Boos, Photo
For the Madurai Messenger, March 2010

A goat bleats, dried grasses rattle. An afternoon sun bakes cool earthen huts. An old man goes into a house for a drink of water. Work is slow in the mid-day, especially in the village of Kurayur, Tamil Nadu, where the much-anticipated North East monsoon has disappointed this year. In better times, the village women would have been waiting in queue to sell the day’s collection of herbs.

Today they huddled in a circle, sporting a rainbow assortment of sarees and speaking in a crescendo of rolling Tamil. With each inquiry from an outsider, one woman would speak for the group, another would passionately chip in and attest, and soon, village children would gather as the speech of the woman develop into a grand forte.

Such is the life of being intimate with nature, living with animals, riding seasons, and praying that the next monsoon and other things will go well. Traditionally in rural India, males were heads of households and made decisions, but in Kurayur, women now have become signifi cant breadwinners. Plants that were once mere weeds have now became a basket of income for the village.

Gold Beneath Their Feet

Over 8,000 species of plants, herbs, shrubs, trees, orchids, grasses, tubers, and lichens have medicinal properties and are being used by millions of households in India, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Traditional medicines that have been in use for curing simple ailments for generations are suddenly seeing a booming interest in India’s pharmaceutical industry. As rural plants cross into urban consumption and more than 75 percent of medicinal plants are being harvesting from the wild, there has been concerns of overexploitation.

Working with the Gram Mooligai Company, village women now earn at least Rs 1500 a month or Rs 50 a day, averaging Rs 2000 a month. If the monsoon between the months of October and December is good, the harvesting season between January to March can net them as much as Rs 6000. That amount may not seem like a lot for a city dweller or someone living in a city like Madurai or Chennai, but for a simple rural lifestyle living off local facilities and resources, it is enough to life a comfortable life considering that this village was once living in poverty.

“We really love the village life, because we have a lot of freedom,” one woman said. “Not only freedom, but we’re standing on our own legs. In cities, it’s a mechanical life, but here we have family, we all stay together, and we can talk to each other all the time.”

The Grama Mooligai Company is owned by self help groups (SHG) from villages just like this. Kurayur Village’s SHG is called the Aiyanar Savings Group with twenty members. Women, who are full time gatherers, run it. The companies shares are also owned by SHGs just like this one. To date, subscribed shares of the company are Rs 5.02 lakhs. Rs 4.95 lakhs of that is held by 30 SHGs. As policy, 70 percent of sale price is paid to producers.

Men form the other piece of the village’s income. Some own farms, work on plantations or chop fi rewood. However, the village women never want their children to feel like they are being tied to the village. Good scores are encouraged amongst the children and if they want to move into the city, they are free to do as they please.

“I want to be an engineer,” a boy said.

An engineer in the United States?

“No, I want to work for India.”

When asked whether or not they knew where the herbals are sold or to whom, the women said they didn’t, there are so many herbal products on the shelves its impossible to know if it went to Himalaya Drug, Natural Remedies, Cavinkare, or others. They are happy there is this demand that has uplifted them from having nothing to something.

“We never worry about it, we are happy here.” The women said.

More so, they have each other.