Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) are the catalysts in socio-economic growth. With an overarching policy, they can usher in sweeping developmental changes.
A decade before the LPG (Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization) reforms in India, gender-agnostic initiatives were prevalent in the rural communities of India. Beyond the glass ceilings and grey-blue tones of the corporate floors, development took shape, away from the limelight of cities.
Be it for survival or status, it is heartening to know that the fight for equality and equity started long back. It paved the way for an economically independent, socially respected sect of people, who were otherwise classified as underprivileged, backward class, or of the sort.
In the 1990s, women’s collectives called the self-help groups (SHGs) became a strong representation of women’s empowerment in India.
Initially formed as a women’s collective, it was later adopted as the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). The NRLM aims to mitigate poverty and procure income for women through their participation in rural community services.
Across the country today, there are 67 million women involved in the rural development across 6 million SHGs, contributing a substantial amount to the Indian economy.
The adoption of SHGs by the central government has had a significant impact on the rural sector, especially in alleviating poverty, improving household income, enabling socio-economic awareness, and financially empowering women.
Emerging as a forum for women to gather and work collaboratively, these collectives aim for more than economic benefits. As far as other benefits are concerned, among the over-arching goal of women empowerment, these groups are the pivotal points of socializing, rural development, a source for financial aid, and networking. Rural women are known to have more financial dealings and independence than their urban counterparts. A few of the popular SHGs in India are UMEED (J&K), Kudumbashree (Kerala), Bhai Bhauni (Odisha), Himmotthan (Uttarakhand), etc.
SHGs during Covid
SHGs had a major role in the pandemic times with their remarkable contribution towards the social cause. As per the report by the Ministry of Rural Development, more than 132 lakh masks have been produced by 14,522 SHGs involving 65,936 members in 399 districts, spread across 24 states of India, in just a period of 15 days from March 15 to March 30, 2020. The Kudumbashree network in Kerala, which holds the merit of being one of the oldest women’s networks with over 4.4 million members now, ran over 1300 community kitchens across the state, providing to the quarantined and the bedridden. The network was also the information dissemination unit, working for the Kerala government in association with the Break the Chain Campaign to reach out to the hard-to-reach populace.
Way forward
Even amidst the time when the whole world paused its business, the SHGs of India played a tremendous role in giving back to society. The women collectives are the standalone examples of the fighting communities of today, who seek different objectives. They are the trailblazers in India to provide rural women the capacity to live socially and economically independent, through their efforts. Though the support from the central government through the funding of Rs 1,625 crore to over 0.4 million SHGs has given satisfactory relaxation to the women’s collectives, there is a lack of a proper policy structure and women-friendly initiatives to scale up the current projects.
Apart from funding, the policymakers may have to look into initiatives like training and development, knowledge transfer, financial assurance, omitting middleman roles, stakeholder connection, etc.
For collaborative growth, a system needs to be implemented for enabling private sector companies to connect with SHGs, which will also meet the supplier diversity agendas of corporates.
