A revolutionary initiative has been taken in Madhya Pradesh to promote small savings and homemade items by women in rural areas. The process of helping rural women has started on a large scale to financially strengthen rural women through self-help groups. Where rural women develop their skills and establish a permanent source of income, they also get rid of the debt trap of the huge interest they had to pay to pawn shops.
Arrangements by the state government to provide bank loans to women’s self-help groups at the lowest interest rate with incentives, prove to be life-saving in protecting poor families residing in rural areas from the trap. loans from pawn shops. . With financial support, the group members stopped mortgaging their land and ornaments to pawn shops and also freed their land by paying off old debts. Examples of this type are numerous in several neighborhoods. Particularly in the districts of Alirajpur, Shahdol and Harda, mortgaged land has been released on a large scale.
In Udaygarh block of Alirajpur district, 85 members from 32 villages and 59 self-help groups released 189 acres of mortgaged land for Rs 31.72 lakh. Likewise, Geeta Lodhi from Jamui village in development block of Sohagpur from Shahdol District secured the release of their mortgaged land with the help of the group. The land of a member of self-help group Jai Durge Aajeevika has been released in Chhirpura village of the Timarni development block of Harda district. The number of families moving rapidly towards self-sufficiency by freeing their land and ornaments from the mortgage is increasing.
Over 37.70 lakh poor rural families have been connected to over 3.30 lakh self-help groups in the state through the Madhya Pradesh State Rural Livelihood Mission under Panchayat and the Department of rural development. So far 2.92 lakh self-help groups have received financial assistance in the form of bank loans of around Rs 2900 crore. Over a hundred subsistence and micro-enterprise activities based on both agriculture and non-agriculture are operated with this amount. The state government has regularly provided benefits to beneficiaries through virtual programs, even during the lockdown and Janata curfew, to strengthen the economic situation of rural families during the Corona period.