Self
Help Group: A debate on its relevance
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| SHG Meeting (Source: jagrutikandhamal.org ) |
Empowerment is an active multidimensional process to enable women
to realize their identity and power in all spheres of life. Empowerment as a
concept was introduced at the International Women's Conference at Nairobi in
1985. The conference defined empowerment as "A redistribution of social
power and control of resources in favour of women. Written by Rudrajit
Sarkar
SHGs have been
identified as a way to alleviate poverty and women empowerment. And women
empowerment aims at realizing their identities, power and potentiality in all
spheres of lives. But the real empowerment is possible only when a woman has
increased access to economic resources, more confidence and self-motivation,
more strength, more recognition and say in the family matters and more
involvement through participation. Although it is a gradual and consistent
process, but women should build their mind set for taking additional effort
willingly for their overall development. SHGs have the potential to have an
impact on women empowerment.
The empowerment
of women is crucial for the development of the country. Bringing women into the
main stream of development has been a major concern for the Government of
India. The word 'empowerment' means giving power. According to the
International Encyclopaedia (1999), power means having the capacity and the
means to direct one's life towards desired social, political and economic goals
or status. Empowerment provides a greater access to knowledge and resources,
more autonomy in decision making, greater ability to plan lives, more control
over the circumstances which influence lives, and freedom from customs, beliefs
and practices. Thus, empowerment of women not just a goal in itself, but key to
all global development goals. Empowerment is an active multidimensional process
to enable women to realize their identity and power in all spheres of life.
Empowerment as a concept was introduced at the International Women's Conference
at Nairobi in 1985. The conference defined empowerment as "A
redistribution of social power and control of resources in favour of women. It
is “the process of challenging existing power relations and of gaining greater
control over the sources of power”. The most common explanation of “Women’s
Empowerment” is the ability to excise full control over one’s actions. Thus,
women empowerment occurs in real sense when women achieve increased control and
participation in decision making that leads to their better access to resources
it often involves the empowered developing confidence in their own capacities.
The
Constitution of India in its fundamental rights has provisions for equality,
social justice and protection of women. These goals are yet to be realized.
Still women continue to be discriminated, exploited and exposed to inequalities
at various levels. So the concept of empowerment as a goal of development
projects and programmes has been gaining wider acceptance. Government of India
has provided for Self Help Groups (SHGs) to them so that proper attention
should be given to their economic independence through self-employment,
entrepreneurial development and wellbeing that ultimately leads to its contribution.
SHGs have been emerged as a powerful instrument in order to alleviate poverty
and for the empowerment of women in the rural economy.
In this way, SHGs are important not only to reduce rural poverty, to
promote rural savings but also to increase gainful employment. Women and SHGs
in many parts of the country have achieved success in bringing the women to the
main stream of decision making. The SHG in our country has become a source of
inspiration for women’s welfare formation of SHG is a viable alternative to
achieve the objectives of rural development and to get community participation
in all rural development programmes.
Self Help Group
(SHG) is a small voluntary association to form a group. It is informal and
homogenous group of not more than twenty members. SHGs consist of maximum 20
members because any group having more than 20 members has to be registered
under Indian legal system. That is why, it is recommended to be informal to
keep them away from bureaucracy, corruption, unnecessary administrative
expenditure and profit motive. In fact, it is a home grown model for poverty
reduction which simultaneously works to empower and shape the lives of its
members in a better way. Groups are expected to be homogenous so that the
members do not have conflicting interest and all the members can participate
freely without any fear. Self-help groups (SHGs) movement has triggered off a
silent revolution in the rural credit delivery system in India. SHGs have
proved as an effective medium for delivering credit to rural poor for their
socioeconomic empowerment.
SHG’s
originated in the year 1975 at Bangladesh by Mohammed Yunus. In the eighties,
it was a serious attempt by the Government of India to promote an apex bank to
take care of the financial needs of the poor, informal sector and rural areas.
And then, NABARD took steps during that period and initiated a search for
alternative methods to fulfil the financial needs of the rural poor and
informal sector. NABARD initiated in 1986-87, but the real effort was taken
after 1991-92 from the linkage of SHGs with the banks, when only 500 groups
were made. Since then, about 24.25 million poor households have gained access
to formal banking system through SHG-bank linkage programme and 90% of these
groups are only women groups (NABARD, 2005). According to NABARD (2006) more
than 400 women join the SHG movement every hour and an NGO joins the
Micro-Finance Programme every day in India.
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| SHG meeting at Deogharh, Jharkhand (Photo: Atanu Deb) |
The basic
principles of the SHGs are group approach, mutual trust, organization of small
and manageable groups, group cohesiveness, sprit of thrift, demand based
lending, collateral free, women friendly loan, peer group pressure in
repayment, skill training capacity building and empowerment (Lalitha &
Nagaraj, 2002). One has to believe that the progress of any nation is
inevitably linked with social and economic plight of women in that particular
country (Narang, 2012). Empowerment by way of participation in SHG can bring
enviable changes and enhancement in the living conditions of women in poor and
developing nations. The underlying principle of SHG is to provide to the
poorest of the poor and to achieve empowerment.
Self Help Group
(SHG) is a process by which a large group of women (10 – 20), with common objectives
are facilitated to come together voluntarily to participate in the development
activities such as saving, credit and income generation thereby ensuring
economic independence. SHG phenomenon definitely brings group consciousness
among women, sense of belongingness, adequate self-confidence. In fact, what
she cannot achieve as an individual, can accomplish as a member of group with
sufficient understanding about her own rights, roles, privileges and responsibilities
as a dignified member of society in par with man. When she becomes a member of
SHG, her sense of public participation, enlarged horizon of social activities,
high self-esteem, self-respect and fulfilment in life expands and enhances the
quality of status of women as participants, decision makers and beneficiaries in
the democratic, economic social and cultural spheres of life. In other words,
we can say that SHG is an effective instrument to empower women socially and
economically which ultimately contributes in the overall development of the country
like India wherein still large segment of women population are underprivileged,
illiterate, exploited and deprived of basic rights of social and economic
spectrum.
SHGs have been
identified as a way to alleviate poverty and women empowerment. And women
empowerment aims at realizing their identities, power and potentiality in all
spheres of lives. But the real empowerment is possible only when a woman has
increased access to economic resources, more confidence and self-motivation,
more strength, more recognition and say in the family matters and more
involvement through participation. Although it is a gradual and consistent
process, but women should build their mindset for taking additional effort
willingly for their overall development. SHGs have the potential to have an impact
on women empowerment.
But the central
government in India is now all set to scrap the scheme. Accordingly, no more
credit funds to women self-help groups, government will skill them and lend
directly. The Women and child development minister has stated that the
government will be appointing a restructuring committee to review the scheme.
It will not give loans to SHGs directly. Further, the revamped scheme will
focus on skill development training. But some activists have strongly condemned
the government’s move. According to them the SHG women always repay small
amounts they borrow, in contrast to big business people. They have gained the
strength to fight all kinds of injustices through such groups. As less than 1
percent of women in the world have property in their name, will any bank give
them a loan without surety?
Self Help Group
concept has been mooted along the rural and semi urban women to improve their
living conditions. Even though SHG concept is applicable to men also in our
country, it has been more successful only among women. To reduce poverty by
enabling the poor household to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage
employment opportunities, resulting in appreciable improvement in their
livelihood on a sustainable basis, through building strong grass-root
institutions of the poor (SHGs) is now the main motive of the most of the
employment schemes. Thus SHGs have been showing the way ahead to alleviate the
poverty of India along with women empowerment.
REFERENCES
Narang, U. (2012) Self help group:
an effective approach to women empowerment in India. International journal
of social science & interdisciplinary research. 1 (8). pp.6
Lalitha N & Nagaraja B.S. (2002)
“Self Help Groups in Rural Development “Dominant Publishers and Distributers,
New Delhi.
NABARD Reports 2005 and 2006.
FOR FURTHER READING
Miller, L. K., & Miller, O. L.
(1970). REINFORCING SELF‐HELP GROUP ACTIVITIES OF WELFARE RECIPIENTS1. Journal of Applied
Behavior Analysis, 3(1), 57-64.
Kasthuri, R., Thamilarasan, S.,
Arul, K., & Jayaraman, K. A CASE STUDY OF SELF-HELP GROUPS IN DHARMAPURI
DISTRICT.
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Rudrajit Sarkar. Doctoral Scholar, RKMVU, F/C for IRTDM, Ranchi
E mail: amirudras@gmail.com
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