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
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