20 Years of Disha
The Birth

Disha Social Organization was formed in 1984 in Sultanpur, a semi-urban area in Saharanpur district. The setting of the formation of Disha was unique. For a few years a voluntary organisation, Centre for Development of Instructional
Technology, Cendit, was actively using communication technology for education and development. During the course of interaction with the villagers, Cendit felt that there should be an independent organisation to take up gigantic task of rural development. Following discussions spread almost two years Disha was born on January 25, 1984.

The initial programmes were particularly targeted at working class, girls and adults. The idea was to build a rapport with the local people as well as to solve their problems, particularly those related to their livelihoods.

A training was organised for traditional weavers in Pather village, some 6 km from Sultanpur, the headquarters of Disha, to enable them to switch over from pit looms to frame looms. Efforts to arrange funds for the trained weavers, however, met only with partial success. Though the weavers’ training was organised with support from government agencies, follow-up was organised with support from Oxfam, which till date continues to support Disha.

The next to be targeted were baan workers. Baan is a rope made out of bhabbhar, a wild grass growing in Shiwalik range, foothills of mighty Himalayas. At that time there were almost 40,000 baan workers. The baan workers are Scheduled Castes and are landless. The baan workers enjoyed traditional rights over bhabbhar, but with the coming up of middlemen on the scene, the condition of baan workers progressively became worse. Disha concentrated on a village with a large number of baan workers, Dandauli Khera. While on one hand it started organising baan workers into cooperatives, on the other it entered into negotiations with the forest officials. In subsequent years the baan workers successfully bargained mode and rate of bhabbhar extraction from forest officials. This aspect is detailed out in section on baan workers’ movement.

A stitching training was initiated for Scheduled Caste and Backward Muslim women in Ferozabad village. After the training the women were given loans and subsidy. But as in case of traditional weavers, the training was far from complete to enable the women to take up the profession and a follow-up training was organised with support from non-government support. The follow-up training created confidence among women group.

Three education centres were run at Sultanpur, Abdullapur Ahari and Pather villages. Two of these were for women and one for men. These education centres helped a great deal in establishing relations with the village residents as they started opening up about their problems and issues.

Health interventions were also taken up in the first year of Disha’s existence. While the organisation emphasised on preventive health education, it did not lose sight of importance of curative aspects of health. It used biochemic medicines, acupuncture and herbs for curative purposes with limited success.

The original objective of Disha read: “To organise people for the socio-economical upliftment and all round development, human and physical, of the downtrodden section…to organise a people’s cooperative for different economic programmes and to mobilise the facilities provided by the government”.

With the passage of time the language of objective statement has been modernised. It now reads: “To mobilise people, mainly deprived and downtrodden, to form sustainable organisations so as to achieve all-round development – social, economic and political – and empower the powerless with special emphasis on women”.

Labour Education

UNORGANISED labours attracted Disha’s attention in the very beginning as some of the very initial activities were targeted on them. These labours were exploited by their employers who did not give them wages at statutory rates and paid lesser wages to women labours. There was great challenge to educate these labours so they could be organised for fighting for their rights. The beginning was made with a labour camp in which just 40 baan workers participated. Though this five day camp discussed problems specifically related to a specific category of labours it succeeded on two fronts. One, it initiated a dialogue of labours with officials from KVIC, block and banks. Two, it discussed issues like small savings, family welfare, farming, knowledge of equal wages for men and women and minimum wages, and intricacies of government schemes like Trysem and integrated rural development programme.