Plenty of sauce.

How saucy can a bunch of poor Indian village women get? Saucy enough to generate a fund of Rs75,000 ([pounds sterling] 1,300) and establish a cooperative to administer it.

Even a chance meeting with Kalindi Bhat hits you with the impact of a steam-roller, as she talks in a rapid-fire mixture of Marathi and English. In 1991, as a lecturer at the Maharashtra State Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology, she became involved in a project to transfer technology to the rural areas, initiated by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

She started out in Sonori, a small village with a population of 2,500, about 45 kms from Pune, which produced tomatoes and green chillies. When the market was weak, the farmers did not even recover their expenses. Bhat helped the village women to register themselves as a cooperative and taught them how to turn their produce into sauces, jams and pickles.

To receive a license to manufacture and market their products, the women had to meet exacting Food Produce Order (FPO) standards. This was a tall order for illiterate women, with no idea of mathematics, weights and measures. It took four months for them to learn how to read the refractometer (using coloured lines rather than numbers), understand about preservatives and acquire basic habits of hygiene. As the well-water available did not pass the FPO test, water-purifying equipment had to be installed. Finally in 1993 the license was granted, without a paisa being paid in bribes--an achievement in itself.

With the help of students from the institute, the women chose `Saucy' as their brand-name. They got the local school to serve their sauce to the children at lunchtime instead of the oily pickles they brought from home. Every dignatory who visited the village was offered a bottle of Saucy instead of the traditional garland and coconut (which had to be imported from outside the village).

Soon jams and chilli pickle were added to the repertoire and a selling outlet was found in the nearest market, at Saswad. In 1992, the cooperative made a profit of Rs2,500; today they operate a fund of Rs75,000, from which they give loans to their members. The women's incomes have also been raised by work contracted out by a big commercial food factory.

While the project at Sonori was developing, Bhat turned her attention to another village, Vanapuri, where the local women made quilts from old clothes and saris.

Without interfering with their colour combinations and designs, she taught them how to produce marketable goods by using sewing machines, straight seams and new cloth and foam. She also encouraged them to make smaller quilts and toys, for the overseas and tourist market. Their products now sell in big city shops and they have used the profits to repair their houses, buy fertilizers for their crops or shoes for their families.

A chance remark by one of the women about her children's prospects launched Bhat into a third project--linking 28 12- to 14-year-olds from the village school with their peers in an experimental, English-medium school in Pune.

At the children's first meeting in Vanapuri, economic differences paled as the rural boys tied bright orange headgear on the city boys' heads and the girls put the auspicious red mark on each others' foreheads. The village children took pride in showing their city friends how to till, sow and reap and in demonstrating their superior agility.

At the city school, the village children saw a computer for the first time. Visits to the National Defence Academy, an agricultural college and a biscuit factory opened their eyes to new career opportunities and several decided to complete their schooling. For two terms, a mobile science van visited the village school and a computer has now been installed in the village.

Characteristically, Bhat has used this experience as the basis for a training programme for 62 rural teachers (with an outreach to 450,000 students).