Cutting edge

And the winds of change are visible in their village and across 12 other villages in Rafiabad deep inside North Kashmir, 60 km from Srinagar.

The group, whose members are mostly undergraduates, has already set up two Cutting and Tailoring Centres, and helped the government bring its Pulse Polio campaign to every doorstep. ‘‘We always looked around us and saw poverty and helplessness,’’ says Tanveer, a Std XII student. ‘‘We never saw anything changing. There is so much corruption and everyone thinks of his own good alone. We talked about it in our group and thought of doing something. Soon our cricket ground turned into a meeting place. We would play and discuss our ideas,’’ he says.

The first opportunity came when a villager was looking for a blood donor for her daughter. ‘‘Ghulam Nabi Bhat met us and we agreed that one of us will donate the blood but sought his help in return,’’ says Ahmad. ‘‘We wanted a sewing machine and he agreed.’’

The group arranged six sewing machines by donating their pocket money as well as the honorarium earned from the Pulse Polio campaign.

Thus the dream of five friends took flight. But the real boost came when a social worker from Delhi, Ashima Koul, came to conduct a research for WISCOMP. ‘‘She helped us a lot. She even donated a sewing machine for our centre,’’ says Hilal Ahmad Rather, 18, the group leader. ‘‘She took us to a training workshop in Srinagar where we learned how to work.’’

The total budget of the group is a meagre Rs 2,000, pooled in by teenagers. There has hardly been any help from the village elders or the government. ‘‘The village elders accused us of being part of a missionary group who want to spread Christianity,’’ says Rather. ‘‘But we kept on working silently and now all the womenfolk and youth are supporting us.’’

Hilal Ahmad, 21, says their group had once approached the sarpanch. ‘‘We tried to explain to him, thinking he might help. But he takes us as his rivals. He told us we should study and play because children have nothing to do with such serious things.’’

But they refused to be mute witnesses.‘‘Our only concept of employment here is government jobs and they are scarce. Then the girls have been made to believe they need not earn for themselves,’’ Hilal says. ‘‘We revolted against this mindset. We convinced poor girls and their parents that they can stand up on their own feet. Today we have 20 girls who are learning tailoring and this is only the beginning.’’

Their first tailoring centre was set up in a rented house at Chijhama village. ‘‘We want to earn ourselves and not be a burden on our families,’’ says 18-year-old Shameema, who has never gone to school. ‘‘We too have dreams,’’ she says. The trainer at the centre, Nahida Aziz (21), a member of the group, has a diploma from the Industrial Training Institute. She has donated her own sewing machine to this centre.

The group has also come to the rescue of a few families which are victims of violence. ‘‘A village boy was killed in a blast. We collected some Rs 2,000 and gave it to them,’’ says Hilal.