Authors: Research Scholar Mr. Brajabandhu Mallick, Assistant Professor Dr. Ajaya Kumar Nanda
Abstract: The Self-Help Groups (SHGs) are the largest community-based institutional framework for economic and social empowerment of women in rural India. This paper takes a multi-dimensional approach and compiles the evidence from Mission Shakti (official statistics of the SHG movement in the district), the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana–National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) (evaluation studies undertaken by the Indian Institute of Public Administration [IIPA] on tribal districts of Odisha), the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) reports on the SHG–Bank Linkage Programme in the district, Census of India (2011) data on district level, and peer-reviewed literature on the SHG movement. Four interwoven set of dimensions are examined: financial inclusion, livelihood improvement, entrepreneurship development and sustainable rural development. It reveals that the architecture of SHGs in the state increased by approximately fourteen times from 2001-02 to 2020-21, the overwhelming majority of tribal-belt SHG members have regular savings behaviour, and they experience perceptible improvements in income and living standards, and that the Geographical Indication (GI) tagged Kandhamal Haldi (turmeric) value chain is a unique pathway for livelihoods in the tribal-belt, which is overwhelmingly managed by the women's SHG. Meanwhile, the movement's transformative power is limited by chronic inequalities in credit absorption, infrastructural isolation, thin market linkages and low female literacy. Finally, the paper offers policy recommendations to strengthen federation-based enterprise development in tribal areas.
