WLTC Photo Stories
Hirmelin Beypi
Hirmelin Beypi is from Karbi Anglong, Assam and is the founder an NGO called Holistic Life Transformation and Empowering Community. She has completed a basic counselling course from Montfort College. Hirmelin comes from a family of social workers. Her mother worked as an adult literacy educator among women and dropouts. Inspired by her parents, Hirmelin has been working as a social worker among destitute women and widow and involved in the education of underprivileged children.
Basapi Terangpi lives with her husband and three daughters in Bapuram Singnar village in Deithor, Karbi Anglong. Basapi works as a house help and her husband is a daily wage labourer. Both are now out of work due to the COVID-19 lockdown. As for government help, she has received 10 kilograms of rice twice through her ration card. An NGO has also helped them with some rice. But that isn’t enough, Basapi has to regularly forage vegetables from the forest. She says that she spends an entire day from 7am to 4pm to be able to forage vegetables enough to sustain her family for two days. The vegetables in the forest are depleting because people from neighbouring villages are also foraging there.
Maya Terangpi lives in Vosaru Arong, Karbi Anglong. A single mother of a girl child, Maya is a daily wage worker. She also weaves for a living. In the photographs, she is cleaning wild taro leaves for dinner and keeping some for the next day. She has not got any help from the government yet. Her parents are helping her out with rice and other essentials. A local NGO recently gave her five kilograms of rice, dal, oil, potatoes and salt.
Almost all of the women I met during this project are daily wage workers. Government aid is limited to distribution of ration but there’s much more to be done. There should be vocational centres, for instance. There should also be a way to help these women to be more open about their problems both inside and outside their homes and to create more awareness about their rights.