Thursday morning some of the group visited the Salar Jung Museum. In the afternoon we visited the head offices of another Grameen Foundation partner, Swayam Krishi Sangam, known as SKS. The first thing I noticed was that there were a large number of women in high-ranking positions at SKS compared with the almost all male SHARE staff. There also were a number of Indian Americans on the staff and as interns. In fact, the head of the organization was an Indian American. He was returning to the U.S. and only retaining his position on the board. SKS was therefore searching for a replacement head. The difference between the management approaches of the two organizations was like night and day, In contrast to the authoritarian style I saw at SHARE, SKS was run in a much more democratic manner, with the staff free to take on much more of a role in policy making. SKS also seemed to be more innovative in its approach. For example, they recruit all of their field staff from the villages, and they do not insist that they have university degrees as do many other Grameen style programs. The group was shown their very well developed loan tracking software systems. They also showed us the Palm Pilot system they had developed as a pilot project that allowed the field workers to enter all the loan repayment and savings details into the handheld computer at the center meetings, thus eliminating the tedious manual updating of the passbooks and of the journal. The pilot, while technically successful, had turned out not to be cost effective, and the system had been dropped.

Next, we traveled to one of the SKS villages to observe a Group Recognition Test. When a new group is formed, the members must learn all the details of the SKS system. When they think that they are ready, a staff member from a regional office gives them a test to make sure that they do, indeed, understand the rules of the program. We arrived at the village and were taken on a home inspection tour. In order to become SKS members and to form a group, the women must be the poor or vulnerable near-poor. Two of the criteria are that they cannot have over a certain amount of assets, and that their houses must be below a certain level. Points are given for such details as what kind of roof they have and what materials the roofs are constructed of. We walked to several of the prospective group member’s houses and asked some questions. One of the women’s husbands got upset after we asked about his house, and demanded to know if we thought he was not poor enough for the program. All the women passed the housing inspection, and then they gathered in a circle with the branch staff and the members of our group sitting on a mat in from of them. The manager tested the understanding of the program of these illiterate women by asking questions and illustrating key concepts with a set of small stones and some money. One of the women looked older than the rest. I would have put her age at over fifty, but when I looked at her information sheet I was shocked to find that she was my age - 40! Clearly she had had a very hard life. As dusk fell, the cooking fires started up and we saw a marriage celebration taking place in the distance. I was mobbed by the village kids who all wanted me to take their photographs. After obliging for a while, I ducked into our van and headed home to Hyderabad.