By Azera Rahman, IANS,
New Delhi : Noorjehan is all of 24 years. A widow with two young children and an ailing father-in-law to take care of, she scrubs floors and cleans people’s houses for a living. She is however luckier than most others. Counted amongst the most vulnerable in the city, Noorjehan is assisted by the Delhi government and NGOs to avail herself of various welfare schemes that she had not even heard about earlier.
The quiet demeanour of Noorjehan, wearing her dupatta over her head and smiling, does not give away the stack of responsibilities on her frail shoulders.
“I have never gone to school and was married off early by my uncle. Soon after, I had two children, now aged five and two. Life was never stable for us, but when my husband died last year I was shattered. I didn’t have a job and had no one to look up to, to get some help to feed my family,” Noorjehan told IANS at her village near Ghazipur on the fringes of the capital.
“I was somehow managing to drag on by cleaning homes when some people came to my house a few weeks back and told me about the widows pension scheme. They said that I can get Rs.1,000 every month because of that. With their help I filled up a form and now I’m awaiting verification by the officials so that I can start getting the money,” she added.
As of now she barely earns Rs.450 per month.
Nazrana Sheikh is another “most vulnerable” member of Ghiroli village identified under the project.
“I have four daughters. Until a few weeks back I was looked upon with pity, but not any more. I was told by NGO workers that the government will help me financially if I let my daughters study. Therefore I filled up forms for all my daughters under the Ladli scheme,” Sheikh told IANS.
As per the scheme, the government will deposit Rs.10,000 in the name of a girl child at the time of her birth and Rs.5,000 each at the time of admission to class one, six, nine, 10 and 12.
Stories like Noorjehan’s and Sheikh’s may be rare, but they are surely good for starters.
The “people” that both these women referred to were actually NGO workers who are a part of a Delhi government initiative — Mission Convergence. The aim is to provide a single window access to all government welfare schemes to the most vulnerable sections of society.
In an effort to recognize the most vulnerable, NGO workers have been conducting surveys. But instead of income level, the vulnerability of a person is measured on other poverty indices like if a person has a home, an occupation, if a woman is a widow, of old age or if it is a child-run household.
Noorjehan and Sheikh are among the more than 11,000 most vulnerable identified in their village in east Delhi.
Chitra from the Caring Foundation who has been helping the government in this project said that they also conduct various vocational courses, non-formal education and health camps in the area — free of charge — but only for women and children.
Saroj Roshan, for instance, is one of the 10 women doing the six-month beauticians’ course. Halfway through the course, she has already bought some basic make-up products and has been using a part of her house as a beauty parlour — thus making a decent living.
The work of some of the other course students has been so good that big companies are coming forth and placing orders for their products in bulk.
For instance, the Archies Gallery placed three orders of 1,500 paper bags made by students of the handicraft class in the centre.
Talking about the whole scheme Chitra told IANS: “Not only do we inform people about the various welfare schemes but also identify the potential beneficiaries for every scheme — be it for widows pension, old age pension, handicapped allowance or the Ladli scheme.
“We then help them fill the form and submit it. Our job doesn’t stop there. We track the form until the availability of the scheme’s allowance. Earlier these people’s forms used to get stuck in the MLA’s office but now they don’t have to go through the MLA — we do everything for them.”
Under the project, more than 900,000 houses and 4.5 million people were surveyed in phase one in the entire city and 349,448 out of them were identified as most vulnerable.
Rashmi Singh, director of Mission Convergence, said that while the second phase of the survey is on, the third phase will commence in September. The entire survey and identification process in the capital will be over by the end of this year.
(Azera Rahman can be contacted at [email protected])