When a humble grandmother from one of Bombay's impoverished neighbourhoods emerged from a glitzy audience in September to collect India's top business award for women, there were more than a few raised eyebrows. Jashwantiben Popat, who runs a women's co-operative, had won the award in the face of competition from a throng of MBA graduates and daughters of mighty families. What is more, she claimed the prize not for herself but for the 41,000 mostly illiterate women who co-own the Shri Mahala Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad co-operative, which makes papads, India's most popular crispy bread.

"Lijjat Papad is about women. We provide work and work gives self- dignity," says Mrs. Popat at her one-room home in a Bombay chawl (tenement). That is where Mrs Popat and six other housewives, bored and confined to their homes, spotted an opportunity to set up Lijjat Papad 40 years ago.

Today, Lijjat Papad is the generic reference for papads. Launched on a shoe-string, the co-operative's annual turnover now exceeds Rs3.1bn ($65m), derived from the sale of packets of papads that typically cost Rs16.25. Exports to countries and regions that Mrs Popat can barely place on a map, such as the US, UK and the Middle East, generate 4 per cent of sales. Mrs Popat says she wants more sales abroad and to double the size of "the sisterhood" in five years. "I'm most proud of the jobs we've created. The women are poor and often the sole earners in their household. If they don't earn here, they won't eat at home," says the spirited Mrs Popat.

Lijjat Papad's success has become a symbol of women's economic enfranchisement in India.

Lijjat Papad's success has become a symbol of women's economic enfranchisement in India. It is also a re- inforcement of the Gandhian principles of self-help and trusteeship that still govern the allocation of resources in a large part of the economy.

The common thread is women and their management of resources, notably capital. Lijjat Papad's growth, for example, supports the view of Chanda Kochhar, who heads a unit at ICICI Bank in Bombay that provides loans to small businesses. She says, "women in control of self-help groups offer a guarantee of genuine economic upliftment". ICICI lends to 5,500 such groups, mostly run by women.

Lijjat Papad - literally "tasty papads" - has been making papads the same way since it was founded. Women collect ingredients to roll, cut and dry at home and return the next day with a minimum 3kg of papads. They are paid Rs16 a kilogram. The papads are tasted to ensure quality before being packed for distribution from Lijjat Papad's 62 centres. Technology is rejected because it displaces jobs.

Nor has much changed in management style, which is based on common sense and Gandhian homilies. First, Lijjat Papad's women pledge allegiance to common values of responsibility, equality, and rejection of charity because it would encourage an image of women in need. Mrs. Popat says this philosophy binds "the sisterhood".

Mrs. Popat has been quick to pick up on some basic characteristics of the Indian market place: every Indian woman knows how to make papad; the female, urban poor are hugely underemployed; and decentralised production is the best way of distributing consumer goods.

Second, making a profit is seen as essential. "If we do not make money the organisation will not run, and to make money it is essential to run the business with skill," says the group's rulebook. There is a narrow, standardised range of products and it does not give credit to the retailers it supplies. Five administrators typically run a branch of 400 women.

Last, Mrs Popat and the managing council of 21 women - who have risen from the ranks of papad makers - have been quick to pick up on, and use to their advantage, some basic characteristics of the Indian market place: every Indian woman knows how to make papad; the female, urban poor are hugely underemployed; and decentralised production is the best way of distributing consumer goods.

"Lijjat Papad works because there are no barriers to entry such as skills; making papad is like a birthright to the Indian woman. And the model is scaleable unlike a crafts-based cottage industry," says Haresh Shah of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, a government agency that supports job creation projects.

Mr Shah believes India could produce more businesses such as Lijjat Papads if organisations such as the KVIC were more active incubators of rural skills. The KVIC, for example, helps with marketing and gives loans but Mr Shah says lending policy should shift from the historic "fund-driven, which creates jobs, to market-driven, which creates jobs and profits". Lijjat Papad's expansion only took off in the mid-1960s when it won KVIC recognition and with it substantial loans.

Co-operatives historically have symbolised a third way between state ownership and the markets in India. Their value has extended beyond jobs; by being inclusive they have cultivated an ethos of democratic participation and the bigger ones have often become launch pads for the politically ambitious. Sharad Pawar, the powerful former chief minister of Maharashtra, emerged from the sugar co-operatives of the west Indian state, for example.

By being inclusive, cooperatives have cultivated an ethos of democratic participation, and the bigger ones have often become launch pads for the politically ambitious.

Mrs Popat may now be a national figure but she has eschewed the political potential of Lijjat Papad. The co-operative's focus remains on improving the lives of its members, providing jobs and, more recently, basic education. To pay for that the business has to keep growing. Lijjat Papad says it spends Rs1m on advertising a month. Previous disappointments - it failed in an attempt to expand into detergents - have persuaded it to stick to what it does best: papads and a variety of derivative products.

But fame has brought costs. At her crowded chawl in the grim alleys of central Bombay, Mrs Popat is now regularly confronted by an aggressive landlord, the culmination, she says, of rising antipathy towards Lijjat Papad's success. "We can no longer use the terrace here, where we used to dry papads. The matter is now in court," she says.

Relief could be around the corner - not in the courts but in Bandra, a Bombay suburb where Lijjat Papad has acquired smart new premises that speak little of its origins. The co- operative moves in next year but Mrs Popat, who at 79 is gradually handing over the day-to-day running of the co-operative to younger women, is unlikely to go. "I will work while Bhagwan (god) allows me, but here, not there," she says, pointing in the direction of Bandra and the new corporate headquarters of Lijjat Papad.




Contributed by Khozem Merchant. Reprinted with permission from The Financial Times.

To read another Global Envision article about organizations that demonstrate the innovation of poor rural women, see A Center For Women.



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