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praveen_india
March 12th, 2005, 02:46 PM
SELF HELP GROUPS MAKE A MARK

Women are a vital part of the Indian economy, both at the national and the household levels. They make up one-third of the national labour force. Compared with their men folk, Indian women contribute a much larger share of their earnings to basic family maintenance with the result that women’s earnings positively and immediately affect the incidence and the severity of poverty. Despite all this, social conventions and gender ideology deprive them of the access to, and control over, the resources which would enable them to increase their productivity.

Women form the backbone of agricultural operations and majority of agricultural labourers are women. Women do 70-80 per cent of the fieldwork. Most post-harvest and processing tasks are their sole responsibility. They are heavily involved in animal husbandry, particularly small livestock. About 85 per cent of persons engaged in dairy production are women.

Since Independence, Government’s policy on women’s development has taken varying types of emphasis; from the initial welfare oriented approach to the current focus on development and empowerment. The Planning Commission, with the aim of converging the benefits in the social and economic development sectors for women in the Ninth Plan, envisaged “inclusion of an identifiable women component plan in the programmes of the respective ministries right from the planning process, and to monitoring and implementation of programmes to ensure the reach of benefits to women”. The Ninth Plan Document (1997-2002) also laid emphasis on the participation of people in the planning process, and the promotion of self-help groups. Empowerment of women was one of the nine primary objectives of the Ninth Plan.

Successful working of SHGs in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka etc. and successful implementation of Social Development Programme such as Mahila Samakhya, some part of DWCRA and programmes undertaken by NABARD and RMK for Women’s development and empowerment highlighted the need: for a change in women’s traditional roles and for organizing them into small, homogenous self-help groups; training them to increase their production skill and productivity; and equipping them through skill upgradation, entrepreneurship training, etc., to undertake more remunerative on-farm and off-farm activities.

Thinking and further deliberations in this direction resulted in the culmination of a pilot project viz. Swa-Shakti Project assisted by IFAD and World Bank in Oct. 1998. This project was originally approved as Rural Women’s Development and Empowerment Project. Given the long-term nature of the issues which negatively impact on women, the overall objective of the project was to launch a programme which strengthens the processes to promote the social and economic development of women and creates an environment for social change to improve their quality of life.

This project emphasised the importance of a holistic approach including a judicious blend of empowerment and development activities in order to have a broader impact on the lives of poor women. The project builds on four ‘pillars’ namely: successful experience with SHGs; growing response of banks to group lending; Increasing opportunities provided through the Panchayati Raj system for women to play a role in decision-making; and the experience gained through other programmes including the IDA-assisted U.P. Sodic Lands Reclamation Project and IFADs Tamil Nadu

Women’s Development Project
The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the processes, and create an environment, for empowerment of women. Establishment of self-reliant women’s self-help-groups (SHGs) having 15-20 members each, which will improve the quality of their lives, through greater access to, and control over, resources; Sensitizing and strengthening the institutional capacity of support agencies to pro-actively address women’s needs; Developing linkages between SHGs and lending institutions to ensure women’s continued access to credit facilities for income generation activities.

Enhancing women’s access to resources for better quality of life, including those for drudgery reduction and time-saving devices; and Increased control of women, particularly poor women, over income and spending, through their involvement in income generation activities, which will indirectly help in poverty alleviation. The Department has been implementing this Project for last 4 years and the following positive results have been achieved:

Economic Empowerment
More than 17000 Women’s groups have been formed and the group members are helped to develop the habit of systematic savings; Women members of these groups are able to open their respective savings bank accounts; Women have developed a “repayment culture”, wherever they get chance to take and repay several small, internal loans for a variety of purposes, including consumption loans; The recovery rate of bank loans is excellent, due to extensive support system developed under the project.

Social Empowerment
Qualitatively, there is evidence of considerable social impact of the project on women, particularly in the well-functioning, homogenous groups of very poor women, where women exhibited a greater degree of self-confidence, greater mobility and greater ease to visit banks and converse with different officials. In the Social area, women are able to get out of their houses, attend group meetings, particularly where considerable opposition from their husbands has been observed.

Skill Development
Landless women, who were formerly labourers, had since become small scale entrepreneurs as a result of the assistance through the project.

Community Asset Creation
The group members undertook many collective actions, ranging from petitions for street lighting to arranging for milk routes to stop at, and suit, their villages. The SHG women have created many community assets ranging from ladies toilet to small hospitals/schools.

Convergence of Services
The project had enabled women to develop appropriate attitudes as well as skills and know how in dealing with external “modern” institutions (such as NGOs, line agencies, banks etc.). Perfect coordination could be achieved among the beneficiaries, NGOs, banks and line departments through the pro-active role played by the project implementation agency.

While formulating the Project and selecting the Project Districts/Areas, major thrust was given to the areas having high percentage of population below poverty line as well as high percentage of SC/ST population. The programme has therefore percolated to the poorest women in rural areas

devdahiya
March 12th, 2005, 03:31 PM
My dear Praveen,

Thanks for a nice update whice i find very informative. However Ground realities are not so green. A lot more is needed to be done and undertaken but definitely things are looking up a shade better at present. GOD SPEED!

praveen_india
March 12th, 2005, 05:57 PM
Dahia ji,

I do agree with you and hope so that you would help me in guiding what more a person/organisation should do (as i am willing to set up a NGO for our community youths and all the indian worldwide). You can see a promo of the portal which I am going to launch shortly. www.yuvaindia.com

sumanmalik
March 13th, 2005, 12:52 PM
Hi Praveen,
Thanks a lot for posting the information. The information design looks good for the home page. I am eager to know about more stuff under kids section.

Regards,
Suman

praveen_india
March 14th, 2005, 06:22 PM
Thanks for your comments Suman ji,

Think about th question that I asked. You are requested to tell me what should I add in any of the section of the page.

Think! if you are a kid, what are your expectations from tha site.

You are a technical writer and it will be a great opportunity for me to hear the comments from you and as a technical writer your suggestions are always becausr they will guide the easiest way of learning.

looking forward for your favorable response.


Praveen

sumanmalik
March 15th, 2005, 09:16 AM
Check out the private message!

Thanks,
Suman

ramksehrawat
March 15th, 2005, 09:36 AM
Nice peace of paper. Almost every year such a paper is published around budget time. Last year too I had read almost the same thing in Hindu newspaper in March (or was it April). Seems to have been written by some urbane babu sitting in Delhi without checking the ground realties. We Indians are good only in one thing: scribling on files schemes which are meant for filing only and never to be implemented. Incidently such papers never mention areas surrounding Delhi. Why ? I think to avoid easy detection of lies. Such reports are like the reigsters maintained by our gram pradhans. If you go by the registers our villages would have been by far in a much better state. Such reports are meant only to conceal the black deeds of peoples' reps for which NGOs and BDOs are their facilitators. Of course they too gain.

praveen_india
March 15th, 2005, 02:01 PM
Seharawat Sir,

Nice to hear from you.
You are very right sir.
The article is speaking from the mouth of the Present UPA Govt. in India.
The words you are speaking is the real fact. I also know that.
I lives in delhi and not in touch of the rural India.
Please let me know the real facts and sure I will put it on a table wheir the real facts will do something in real it is my promise.
I also want the true criticism and real facts without any favour which will help empower the INDIAN WOMEN.

In search to hear from you.

PRAVEEN

ramksehrawat
March 16th, 2005, 03:05 PM
Dear Praveen,

There is no institutionalised empowerment of women as such. The very concept of women empowerment, or for that matter any social or economic activity, has nothing to do with governmental action. It comes with the spread of education, which is the only contribution of government and we must be thankful to them for having provided the educational facilities in villages. It is not that the Government do not plan or they do not have schemes. Rather they have in plenty which remain unimplemented. What prevents the government from doing anything are the money and politics. Whenever, we have a few ruling politicians not hankering after money and rising above party politics to work towards the betterment of people, India will be a different country altogether. We had such politicians only in Jawaharlal era and whatever progress we have achieved today is a result of some positive actions of that era. The successor governments have barely managed to maintain that momentum or added to that on an incremental basis.