Transforming life: Story of Janki, Panbihar village & NCUI Haat

The NCUI Haat has of late grown into an important marketing platform for Self Help Groups around the country. Over the last couple of years since the Haat commenced functioning, it has logged a considerable amount of buying and selling of products made by women working with SHGs.

Anuradha, a communication Associate of NCUI, who recently visited the Haat just to get a feel of the newly created marketing platform happened to do a story on a woman called Janki Mathur she met randomly on the Haat. Janki sold her own SHG’s products at the fair.

Janki would sell pure cotton garments, decorative items like toran and jhumar (wall hangings), mud-cow dung art, handcrafted thread work based necklaces and earrings, beautiful bangles created from molten waste plastic. She would sell them at extremely reduced prices. She seemed to pile it high and sell it cheap.

But she was happy about the bottom line she had been able to make in the country’s capital. According to her, selling products on the NCUI Haat had given her an exposure to highbrow customer, something that indeed had been a remarkable experience.

She hails from a village located in Ghatiya tehsil of Ujjain district in Madhya Pradesh ? Panbihar.She runs a self-help group (SHG) ? Satyanarayan Aajiwika Swayam Sahayata Samuh ? and works as a trainer and motivator, who ensures that all women of Panbihar turn self-reliant like her; has formed various SHGs in her village transforming many lives and ensuring their families’ well-being with Janki in the lead.

The village Panbihar has hundreds of households with several operational women SHGs. Of these SHGs, Janki is the inspiration behind the formation of quite a few of them.

Long story short, the NCUI Haat has caught on and there are hundreds of Jankis who are using the marketing platform to change the financial backgrounds of their SHGs. This has meant people in large numbers in remote areas in the countryside are getting income and overcoming their poverty.

Towards the end of her story Anuradha quotes Janki as saying SHG members would like to expand their business and register themselves as multi-purpose cooperative societies and learn online marketing to reach out to more customers. The NCUI Haat has greatly encouraged them. Janki adds that once they have formed a women-led cooperative society in the village nobody can stop them from flying high.