Centre puts focus on women self-help groups

Ravi S Singh

New Delhi, September 9

The Centre has put focus on inclusion of left-out poor rural women across 34 states and Union Territories (UTs) into women’s Self Help Groups (SHGs) under its flagship Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM).

The formation of women-centric SHGs are effective and convenient instrumentality to organise women into a collective economic force in rural areas, based on ventures keeping with the strength of local areas in country as diversified and geographical spread as India.

Also, SHG creates them into socially cognizant groups, and helps their mobilization for a cause. This brings them in the participatory process, and help train them up to be entrepreneurs, and in leadership roles-all with the aim to empower them in all dimensions of life.

Politically, many in government circles are credited with the view that, by and large, women across India, have been comparatively lending support to the initiatives of the Narendra Modi dispensation. 

Large sections of women in the Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Minorities and of other downtrodden sections are reportedly appreciative of the intentions of the government.

The present dispensation at the Centre will obviously aim to enlarge this political and social capital for itself, especially with gentle winds of the 2024-General Elections started to whizz by.

Exercise by senior leaders of opposition parties to position as a face against Narendra Modi for the 2024 general elections has begun. The brass of the ruling BJP, too, held its first meeting here to strengthen the party in 144 Lok Sabha constituencies they have identified as electorally weak link in  party political calculus.       

The Union Rural Development Ministry mounted a 15-day country-wide campaign from Wednesday last to expedite the inclusion of left-out women in the SHG scheme.

During the campaign, women institutions from each village will conduct a social mobilisation event where each member will bring a friend, or neighbour who is a non-SHG member with them.

The benefits of being a part of DAY-NRLM SHGs will be highlighted during the campaign, and those non-members, thus will be motivated to link themselves with these community institutions.

Special strategies are also being prepared by block level staff across states to reach women in remote gram panchayats.

The campaign also aims to ensure that SHGs are included into higher-level federations; tier two level Village Organisations (VOs) and tier three level Cluster Level Federations (CLFs).

The Ministry’s vision is that such federated structures will evolve into community-managed institutions of the poor that can lead programmes for livelihood and social development. Bank accounts will be opened for all the SHGs, VOs and CLFs within seven days of being formed.

More than 8.5 crore families have been linked with over 78 lakh SHGs under DAY-NRLM’s fold, as of August end.

The Mission is being implemented in more than 6842 blocs in 721 districts across all the 26 States and 6 UTs. More than Rs 19,249 crore of capitalisation support (Revolving Funds and Community Investment Funds) has been provided to the SHGs and their federations.