In Odisha’s towns and cities, there are daily and weekly haats, where both male and female sellers are found. Participation of women in the case of production of perishable vegetables and food items what they are preparing for their family consumption and sale of the surplus in the market is high. Thus, a Mahilla haat will provide them space for accelerating their income and societal recognition.
In this back drop “Mahila haat project” will be an ambitious project that aims to facilitate women empowerment. It will provide a platform for village women to sell their products under a single roof, create awareness among people about the products which will be manufactured by village women. It will bring a change in the lives socially and economically. It will create market linkages for village women. Mahila haat would thus emerge as an important shopping and cultural destinations for the village women. With the objective of serving as a market place for village women, such type of haat will serve as a cultural centre, thereby promoting village women and their skill development at the grassroots level.
Women in village of Odisha are preparing pickles, Badi and various types of cakes like Poda Pitha, Enduri Pitha, Chena Poda etc during festivals like Kuamar Purnima, Bada Osha, lakshmi Puja, Makara, Aanla Nabami, Nuankhai, and Chadkhai, the. Apart from this, women in village generally prepare Jhoti, Rangoli and all cultural items during celebration of local puja and festivals. So they need a platform to showcase their skills. A good example of partnership in women’s empowerment is to provide food to migrant workers which can expand its catering activity and can set up canteens, women’s hostels, hospitals, by women self help groups. The catering scheme is an employment generation programme. The work will act as micro entrepreneurs.
Training programme for the village women must take into account the cultural, local, linguistic and social factors. All arrangements must be made for imparting special training for them. Any capacity building programme must take into account their indigenous knowledge irrespective of whether they are literate or illiterate. Inter village exchange visits of the village women must become a regular feature of the capacity building exercises.
The Government should launch a programme for skill mapping of village of Odisha. This would map all the villages in the State with their core competencies in terms of skill across the field of agro products and cuisine among others and then develop their potentials in a focused way.
Mahila haat will become a facilitation centre for women producers, who face common problems such as lack of marketing support/strategy, quality of product, inadequate wages, difficulties in raw material procurement etc. Therefore WSHGs should facilitate loans and bank accounts to the rural women. Also, women from these groups should inform about issues like education, health, hygiene, nutrition, adolescent girl’s education, and agriculture based activities like poly houses, vermi compost, organic manure, soil and water conservation etc. The market will be a first- of-its-kind, where vendors will be predominantly women. They will sell all consuming day to day items of households. Therefore such project will provide space and impetus to village women.