Introduction
An SHG has 10 to 20 people from a homogenous class. They come together for addressing their common problems. The SHG approach is founded on the following two principles:
- Every human being has tremendous potential in her/himself. This hidden potential in the poor can be unleashed if the right environment is provided.
- As an individual, the poor are voiceless, powerless and vulnerable. By bringing them together as a homogenous collective, they have tremendous strength.
The members are encouraged to make voluntary thrift on a regular basis. These resources are then pooled to make small interest bearing loans to their members. The process helps them absorb the essentials of financial intermediation including prioritization of needs, setting terms and condition, and accounts keeping. This gradually builds financial discipline in all of them. Beside this the SHG approach is also based on the understanding of poverty not just as material deprivation but a continuous process of “dis-empowerment” that includes denial of choices/rights/opportunities, discrimination, disparity, domination, displacement, and de-humanization. SHG’s understanding of development may not be explicitly stated. Yet, it is implied in the approach that development is transformation of people into agents of their own development, about building peoples own initiatives, and about addressing the injustice behind the exclusion, deprivation, and disempowerment of the poor. Thus WBCSSP was trying for inclusive development through strengthening SHGs in their initiatives.
The role of SHG is vital in determining the inclusive growth and the quality of growth. The World Bank has stressed the role of institutions in its Report of 2005 as institutions for poor. Till 90’s the policies of developing countries were concentrated only on raising the income rather than raising the standard of living of the people. This has resulted into exclusive growth which created island of prosperity in the midst of the abject poverty. The SHG formation in the village has given the poor women their right to access credit. The experience of SHGs has shown that although they have provided improved access to credit it is not reasonable credit. But the concern is that the poor women access credit mainly for crisis and consumption purposes only (mostly food, health and education). Although participation in SHGs has meant opportunities related to mobility and a legitimate space in the public realm for leaders of SHGs, the overall picture is one that raises several critical concerns related to gender justice and livelihoods. It cannot be limited to merely forming of SHGs and providing access to credit. It cannot replace with the role of development and growth in other sectors and cannot be an excuse for reducing state expenditure on social sectors. By projecting the SHGs involved in savings and credit activities as the most effective way to deal with poverty the burden of poverty removal falls on women.
Some of the important concern and the challenges:
SHG members have little control over financial resources. There continue to be serious stumbling block faced by women when they want to access credit from banks. The nationalised banks never creates any hurdles for the loans to purchase motor byke. (I have not done any research or came across any such research that shows the distribution of loan by the nationalised banks. I mean to say that how much money has the nationalised banks given to the poor women and how much for the rich corporate people. If any research done I am hopeful that one would find the imbalance as well as the balance tilted towards the rich people. Why is it so?)
The income generation programmes undertaken by the SHG have been unviable. It is only due to the lack of infrastructure, marketing and capacity building. Low levels of credit absorption capacity, low skill base and low asset base have been challenges to the SHG movement, which are yet to be addressed. (My own experience tells me that the loans are given to the SHG by the nationalised banks only to fulfill their targets and DRD Cell of the districts, responsible for the growth of SHG never plays its role properly. Hence the burden of the debt on each SHG and the member at the grassroot is increasing day by day. The government lacks political will as well as vision. Why is the Government not able to come up with proper strategy?)
The basic livelihoods concerns related to the existing economic realities (such as those related to agriculture or natural resources) of poor women’s lives remain largely unaddressed in the process.
The rapid growth of SHGs combined with inadequate support being provided to them has meant that a large number of groups are non-operational and exist only on paper. The pressure of targets has meant that there are multiple claims being made on SHG members by different sponsoring agencies, thereby exaggerating the number of women being covered by SHGs.
The agenda of SHGs most often fails to include social justice and equity issues.
Members of SHGs are also making demands from governance institutions often without success.
Although it is recognized that literacy is an important factor, capacity-building inputs to develop literacy skills are very limited.
Women experience invisible barriers to entry in economic and political spheres.
SHGs find that the existing governance systems are not accountable to them when they really needs help. Most often the government programmes tend to challenge the Panchayati Raj Institutions from where the SHGs could potentially seek redressal of their grievances.
While SHGs serve the interests of numerous institutional players such as the State (including in the delivery of development messages and schemes), banks and corporations, there is grossly insufficient ploughing back of any resources for the women themselves, either for crisis support or for their capacity building. This is despite the fact that information, skills, attitudinal change and perspective building are corner stones of empowerment and poverty alleviation.
Amongst SHG members it is group leaders (who are the more educated) who are receiving inputs.
When issues related to gender are included in the group leader trainings, they receive only tokenistic attention.
There is no subsitute of SHG at present as I always feel that we cannot go on replacing one model with another but work together to make present model work effectively. Let us discuss on this and influence the government. Who ever reads please share....
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