INTERVIEW to buy something or save some money or if she wants to invest, she can use her own money. Secondly, such self help groups also work as a social pressure group on the local gram panchayat. The groups also take up social responsibilities such as mobilising attendance for an immunisation camp or participating in the Swachch Bharath Abhiyaan. Thirdly, SHGs also make women socially aware, and they learn the value of education, health, sanitation and economic independence of the girl child. They also promote good habits such as cleanliness and sending children to school, especially girls and contribute to the wellbeing of the society. Women in SHGs enter the banking system and take up productive economic activities. They buy, produce, sell and save and indirectly contribute to the GDP of the country. Please elaborate on the effectiveness of the Sanjeevini programme, as seen by your professional experience. Sanjeevini has gone to the grassroots and connected the last mile of the state. It has gone to the villages and remote areas which the government couldn’t reach earlier. It has been able to encourage cottage industries and traditional crafts that had not received much support. For example, some women’s groups are making beautiful, traditional jewellery, weaving sarees and bags and in some other places, they are making sanitary napkins at a very low cost. These women SHGS are selling their products locally and in the markets of the state and country. Women who were not a part of the economic growth of the nation are now getting involved at the village level. SHG is a wonderful programme that handholds women to become a part of the economic activity of the country. Because it’s a group activity, the women also get together, share information and participate in the rural development of their village. It's a wonderful programme where women get together, think positively and talk about the wellbeing of their families and village. How is the Skill Development Authority aligned with NRLM-Sanjeevini? We have aligned with them very closely because women need training. Sometimes, women are good
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in a particular activity but they need upskilling or skilling of whatever art or talent they have. We work together with the NRLM to ensure that they learn the latest technology to handle the products.
Catalyst for Social Change
We also help them in upscaling their business and market the products. We use our own contacts in companies such as Flipkart, Amazon or Walmart to get a better market for the product. We work as a team along with the NRLM. In your vast experience as an administrator, what is your opinion about the potential of SHGs to empower women? Has this potential been fully tapped? If not, what else needs to be done?
Dr. S Selva Kumar, Secretary, Skill Development, Entrepreneurship and Livelihood Department, Government of Karnataka, talks about the roadmap for women’s self help groups in the state.
The self help group is a very good model to empower women. It is easier to motivate a group of women than a single woman. When we tell an individual woman to venture into livelihood activities, she might think twice, but if 15 women get together, they find comfort in numbers. The SHG model goes a long way in empowering rural women. It has come a long way, but I think it can do even better and reach all the women in all the villages. We have to keep up the efforts and cannot be complacent. We have to continuously keep looking at creating more self help groups, until we reach a saturation point. The programme has a huge potential because there are many underprivileged women in tribal belts and SC/ST communities. We need to have a drive to push into those areas. We need committed workers to go to these areas and talk to the women there. Creating a self help group is not very easy; we need committed workers who can go and sit with women, talk to them and motivate them, handhold them, arrange linkages to banking, marketing, permissions, licenses etc. This needs a lot of dedication and committed workers at the grassroots level. And that is what we need now, we need to get people to go to remote parts of the country and explore and identify their potential. That is the challenge. I would like to congratulate the NRLM team for their efforts to promote Sanjeevini; they are doing a good job. I wish them good luck.
Micro-entrepreneurship of women in rural areas has led to financial inclusion, economic and social development. To build on the progress achieved thus far, the Karnataka government’s focus is on value-chain development and creation of forward-linkages. What are the contributing factors that have aided the success of rural SHGs? The key to success of self help groups lies in the very name, ‘self ’. People can succeed only through their own efforts. It’s a common fallacy that poor people need financial help and to determine how they operate, who leads them, and so on. There is considerable evidence to the contrary that indicates that community action most often succeeds when help is limited to incentives, and often non-monetary
incentives, and when outside (non-financial) resources are facilitated to enable access on the terms of the community, and not the provider. To quote the development scholar Robert Chambers, “Rural development is a strategy to enable a specific group of people, poor rural women and men, to gain for themselves and their children more of what they want and need. It involves helping the poorest among those who seek a livelihood in the rural areas to demand and control more of the benefits
Sanjeevini has 1,70,210 SHGs with 21,83,375 members in different stages of life cycle.
SHGs formed between 2014 and 2016 onto different livelihood activities and training and facilitating start-ups.
Thirty thuosand micro-enterprises were started during 2019-2020. Sanjeevini | 15
