About Maati

Maati is a Place Women Organize Around Land, Forest, and Traditional Crafts:
We work the earth and grow our own food and sell some of it. We procure and make available seeds, sprinklers and fair trade outlets for women farmers. We nurture, use, and administer our forests and our waterways. We create, weave, and market woolen products.

Maati Stands Up Against Violence Against Women:
We continue the struggle to break the complicity of silence - of deprivation, violence and sexual harassment. With deep caste and class divides and family allegiances it is hard for women to step out and take a collective stand--yet time and again through Maati we have. As a result, Maati has had to confront the opposition of the local elite.

We Fund Our Work In Diverse Ways:
Membership fee is nominal and varies for farmers, students, and working women. As part of our fund-raising drive each year we make nature based handmade cards, calendars, and other handmade artifacts. We take a small surcharge on woolen products marketed or service rendered.

As wool and wool work is a traditional skill in this mountainous region, our members produce woolen accessories like mittens, gloves, socks, or weave homespun woolen fabrics - tweeds and shawls. We provide marketing support for a diverse variety of woolen products made by women - from shawls and stoles made from pashmina, angora, camel, Tibetan and local sheep wool, to traditional colourful blankets or ramsarans, the more ethnic chutkas and thulma which are thick woolen blankets used locally. These we retail locally to tourists visiting Munsiari and through a network of friends to larger metropolises like Delhi. Other than a 5% mark up that goes to Maati, our objective is to get as good a price for the producer, as this is the main livelihood for women. Basanti, a farmer, weaver, and a mother of two young children coordinates this aspect of our work.

We do the same with the rajma (kidney beans) that are grown organically in Munsiari and are famed for their quality. Pushpa and Khasti have been responsible for cleaning, grading and packing and have had a good amount of collective help to deal with the 5.5 quintals we procured this past year.

Maati's Health Programme Initiatives:
After having successfully organized a TB support programme for over two years, we finally managed to persuade the state run health services to provide medication through the local PHC. Until then we were dispensing the medication, especially to those people from Munsiari, who every couple of months had to make a five hour bus journey to Pithoragarh to pick up their medicine.

We continue to work on raising health awareness amongst women and have organized pregnancy testing facilities. Rekha is slowly growing into the role of coordinating our health activities. We hope over time to have the resources for a Sehat Kendra (Health Centre) and to train Rekha to run a basic diagnostic facility.

Networking with State and National Organizations:
Though our identity and activities are rooted within our immediate, local context, we network with women's and other civil society organizations at the state and national levels. Basanti Rawat, Bhavna Kandari, Khasti Barnia, Malika Virdi, Pushpa Arya and Rekha Rautela are active on this front.

Over the years we have spearheaded several campaigns alongside local village level women's groups called Mahila Mangal Dals, with elected representatives, and other civil society organizations and human rights groups. We are a part of a state level network--Uttarakhand Mahila Manch and Malika is the Coordinator for Pithoragarh district. We have an active unit in Munsiari. Pushpa is the local coordinator and Bhavna is a Working Committee member.

Maati Has Taken Up the Following Campaign Issues:
Campaigning for teachers in the junior, high, and intermediate level schools and the Degree College, as it is the girl student who is the hardest hit when education is not available locally and she is not given the option to study outside Munsiari. We work closely with the Students Union.

Wool carding machine - for its repair and continued maintenance by the state and against moves to privatize it.
Panchayati Raj election process - supporting women representatives and strengthening democratic governance processes.
Van Panchayat - critically reviewing the state policy on community forests and actively participating in its governance.
Anti-liquor campaign, especially against the entry of the liquor mafia in remote areas like Munsiari, aided by the opening of state run liquor outlets.
Campaign challenging the rampant corruption in water and electricity services and the growing privatization of these basic amenities, which is taking it out of the reach of the poor.
Uttaranchal State Policy on Women - active in drafting policy, especially aspects related to forests, water, and land that affect rural women.
Supporting the state-wide agitation to make Gairsen the permanent capital of Uttaranchal.