Every person has a different lens to look at empowerment. Some see it with the lens of education some with the livelihood some with law and order and some can look it as rights and duties. Groups can bring strength and empowerment to the members while individual growth is much more evident in the groups. SHG groups have become a pillar of rural empowerment. As I was growing up I got to know about the SHG groups and their functioning. Right now I am working with a SHG group I can truly understand the power a group holds and the power a group can give to the individual.
My first introduction to SHG was in my village, I was in school, and a very new concept of ‘Swayam Sahayta Samuh’ came into the picture. The Asha of our village organized a meeting of women which itself was odd for me because I only saw women of our village gather around when there was some function or special occasion in our village. The meeting took place in her house, and I remember only around 20-30 women gathering around. The meeting was also special in the sense that almost all the women of the village gathered together despite their caste and age. The seating arrangements were obvious enough but still, it was for the first time. The result of that meeting was a self-help group came out of it depositing 10 rupees per month, which felt like a huge sum of money because you are just giving it to something not knowing anything and the promise was that we would get that money back after some times like double or more.
The SHG worked for 3-4 months after that some people lacked trust, some didn’t have money to deposit some just didn’t want to participate because they didn’t see any profit after so many months. After this, the SHG stopped functioning and nobody knows what happened to their money. My mother was part of that SHG so all this information was passed down to me by her and I remember some part of it. After that, nobody talked about SHGs in our village because this incident was famous as a big scam in our village.
Even though it was called a scam for the first time a concept of collective involvement in financial matters of women was introduced in our village and even now I remember the pride in the voice of my mother and neighbors when they were saving money. The concept of SHG succeeded in this manner.
The second time I heard about it was in economics books in 9th class. So now I have some theoretical knowledge as well. Which came in handy when people were talking about the scam incident I also started contributing by saying I read about it.
I was in the master one of the elderly men from our village called me and my cousin and told me all about the newly formed SHG which he wanted my mother and my Chachi to be part of the group. He told us all the information and how it was going to work. Before that, he had already talked to my mother about it but she wanted to understand the technical things so she wanted me to understand all that first. So, after that, she has been a part of that group, we don’t know much about how they work in that group they do have meetings sometimes and even though she is not in the village right now she is still a part of that group. They make monthly savings and she always remembers it at the end of the month.
Whenever I talk about that group and ask her why she wants to be a part of the group she then tells us different incidences when a member needed money urgently and the group helped them. A financial security comes from this group for my mother and I have heard the same reason from a lot of other villagers. When I think about SHG formation and its benefits a thought always comes into my mind even if SHG didn’t played the role of entrepreneurship development in our village it still gave the financial security to women.
Now I am working with a SHG group involved in weaving as entrepreneurs, I had a bigger picture in front of me. The whole SHG concept didn’t just made them earn the money it introduced the members to the world. Now SHG members feel belongs to somewhere. They have built their own stage to perform and acquiring other stages as well. As an entrepreneur they are dealing with the world, the market, the customer, the officials, the villagers, their families as well. As a business person they need to express what they observe they learn. They learn from each other, they share what they learn from someone else. A lot of times when I sit with SHG members they talk about the designs someone else from other village is making, where they sold it and for how much money. They do have every single detail and then they discuss how different or same their own product is.
I want to share a big change after coming here. Charkha exhibited at Delhi Haat for 15 days. During these 15 days they met a completely different audience the people there were asking questions about the wool quality how it is made the history behind it and many more questions. They met some foreigners who could not understand Hindi but they somehow managed. But after coming back from that exhibition everyone started paying extra attention to the technical terms of the process, they started asking about wool type the quality the difference in products. Some even asked to teach them simple English conversation so next time they can handle the customer better.
Now a new memory is added to this. Our travel workshop has given me a more beautiful picture of a self-help group. For our travel workshop we traveled to Bhuj, Kutch, and Gujrat, There we met a self-help group called ‘Subhanalla’. As the name says we really felt like wow subhanalla this is how also a shg can function. They call it ‘Bachat'(saving) and they monthly deposit 200-500 rupees per month in the group account, I am assuming just like me you will think is that all this, not something we can call a very well-functioning shg. There is more to the story. They take loans out of the group, some women have started their clothing business out of that loan, 2 members bought auto for their family so their husbands can have a steady income, one took money for her operation, one for her daughter’s marriage and whatnot. This Shg is working on livelihood, health, empowerment, poverty, and entrepreneurship and I am sure if I had spend some more time there was much more to learn. This was an eye-opening interaction for me.
This is how a SHG group is developing a person and a group. Even though the direct impact can be seen as financial security but it is also empowering them socially. Making them a decision maker, giving them a group to seek support from and to help others.
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