Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

326 MANDAKINI PANT
Swa-Shakti is the project for Rural Women’s Development and Empowerment
(RWDEP), evolved by the Government of India’s Department of
Women and Child Development and the Women’s Development Corporations
of six states: Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh
and Uttar Pradesh. The SHGs under the Swa-Shakti project are linked to
banks. Rather than being mere savings and credit collectives, these are
intended to play a critical catalytic role for the improvement of women’s
position in the family and society. PANI in Faizabad district and Purti
Sansthan in Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh facilitated the formation
of SHGs under the Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY). This
scheme aims to establish a large number of micro-enterprises in the rural
areas, building upon the potential of the rural poor. It covers all aspects
of self-employment: organisation of the rural poor into SHGs (with
at least half of the groups being exclusively for women), their capacitybuilding,
planning of activity clusters, infrastructure build-up, technology,
credit and marketing. District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs)
implement the scheme with the active involvement of PRIs, banks, the
line departments and the VDOs.
SHG formation evolves through various phases. What follows is an
attempt to define the processes in each phase, based on the study findings.
Group Formation
Members are linked together by various common bonds of age, caste,
community, landownership and activity. These ‘affinity groups’ are critical
to the success of SHGs. Members of the SHGs in the study belonged mostly
to the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Other Backward Castes (OBCs). The
majority were small landowners with landholdings ranging between
one and five acres (0.4–2 ha.). A substantial section of the members were
landless agricultural labourers. The average age of SHG members was
from 20 to 50 years. The majority of the members were illiterate, followed
by a substantial section of those who could only sign their names. Very
few of them had studied up to Class VIII.
Group Savings
The groups begin with savings. The group holds regular meetings of members,
where they contribute an amount decided as a saving deposit. After