Summer 2003 Feature

Bishnumaya Pariyar '04

Empowering the Dalit Women of Nepal

Bishnumaya Pariyar (PMC ’04—Social and Political Systems) is committed to changing the lives of the women and children of her caste, the Dalits, in her homeland, Nepal. As the lowest caste, Dalits were traditionally beyond the protection of laws, and until 1964 did not benefit from any of the country’s infrastructure. They were barred from most temples and schools, they could not use public transportation, they could not go into shops either owned or frequented by higher-caste Nepalis, and they could not even use water shared by the rest of the community.

Although Nepali laws now recognize the equality of the Dalits, progress has been very slow. Dalits are still on the bottom rung of the economic ladder in a country having one of the lowest standards of living in the world, and they are still looked down upon by members of all the other castes. Most Dalits spend their entire lives in grinding poverty at the sub-sistence level, with little access to healthcare, to hygiene, or to ways of breaking out of the cycle of poverty. Their infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. Only 3 percent of Dalit women (10 percent of men) are literate. While Dalits are about 21 percent of the population, they own only 1 percent of the land.

In 1996, when she was 20 years old, Bishnu founded Empower Dalit Women of Nepal (Association of Dalit Women’s Advancement of Nepal –ADWAN), a small nonprofit, non-sectarian organization, to initiate literacy and self-help programs such as autonomous savings and loan associations among the Dalit women. Today she heads up an organization staffed by 20 volunteers, with more than 1,000 Dalit women members. More than 700 of them have received assistance to set up their own businesses and become small-time entrepreneurs. Monies have also been raised to send more than 400 children to school with appropriate clothes and supplies.

Bishnu is the daughter of subsistence farmers in the remote village of Taklung in the Gorka Province of western Nepal—one of ten children, most of whom are illiterate. “Although my parents were poor, they worked very hard and we always had enough to eat,” she stated. “They valued education and they sent us to the village school, once it became possible for Dalits to attend. I loved to read, and I loved to learn.“

“When I finished at the village school, I wanted to keep going, but there was no money. To pay tuition for high school, I got permission from the owners of the large fields in our village to go out and glean what was left over after the harvesters had finished their work. I worked hard and sold what I gleaned to pay my tuition and buy my books.” High school was a four-hour walk from Taklung along a dirt path over mountain passes, a trek Bishnu made twice daily. She excelled at the school (the number-one ranking student) despite unpleasantness caused by higher- caste students.

A stimulus for organizing her ADWAN project was an internship at the Self Help Development Program sponsored by the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. “As a facilitator my job was to help create women’s groups to set up their own enterprises,” Ms. Pariyar said. “I got very frustrated, though, because the program required the women to put up collateral before they could get a loan, and most of them had nothing. As a result, the women who needed the program the most couldn’t benefit.”

“I decided to set up my own program to help these women,” she continued. “Every women who joins our organization is required to pay a monthly membership fee of 35 rupees (approximately 78 cents). With the money that is raised, loans are then made to the members. Most of it goes for simple things like the purchase of chickens, geese, sheep, and goats. Occasionally someone will take a larger loan to purchase enough stock to open a small store. Each group is also required to sponsor a literacy program, a hygiene and healthcare program, and then to educate the children.”

“Although the amounts of money that we collect are small,” Pariyar emphasized, “we have been able to accomplish a lot. To date more than 700 loans have been given out to Dalit women without collateral, and not a single one has defaulted. Overall the equivalent of $7,000 has been raised by women who had nothing.”

Bishnu came to the US in 1999, to continue her education, at the urging of several American women who had supported her project. “When I first came to Boston, I looked for an educational program to help me further refine my skills and that was supportive of women, women’s rights, women’s issues, and women’s leadership,” she recalled. “I found PMC’s home page on the Web. I liked the description of the College’s mission, and when I visited the campus and met some of the administrators and faculty, I fell in love.”

“I believe that my time at PMC has enabled me to develop my leadership skills and has given me the tools to be more effective in my mission,” Bishnu concluded. “The PMC community has been incredibly supportive of our program in Nepal, and as a result of fundraisers on campus, we were able to send more than $2,000 to Nepal. Today 200 Dalit children are going to school as a result of the generosity of PMC.”

In January 2003, Pariyar helped her organization sponsor the first national symposium in Nepal dedicated to examining the plight of the Dalit people. Attended by high-ranking government officials, the symposium was extensively covered in the regional press of both Nepal and India.

After graduation next year, Bishnu intends to return to Nepal to expand her organization to new communities, to further develop the existing groups through training and development, especially in the areas of public health and child care, and to improve teacher training.

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