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The Department of Women and Child Development (WCD), Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has signed a path-breaking Memorandum of Understanding with Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), an autonomous statutory body under the Ministry of Agro and Rural Industries, Government of India here today. KVIC and the Department of WCD have agreed to jointly initiate micro-enterprise activities and evolve marketing strategies by utilizing the services of field officers of both KVIC and DWCD.
The agreement will initially be for 3 years extendable to 5 years if found efficacious. The agreement was signed by Dr. Loveleen Kacker, Joint Secretary in Department of Women and Child Development, Govt. of India and Smt. Maya Sinha, Commissioner of KVIC.
If the KVIC-DWCD initiatives take root, it would open a window of opportunity to women in abject poverty to access market at State and Regional level. It will provide consultancy services, process project proposals to generate employment in rural areas and help to develop of women’s skills. They will also have the support services of KVIC in packaging, quality control and brand name to market their produce.
The interest of KVIC in entering into an agreement with DWCD is two fold. The mandate of KVIC since inception has been to promote village industries and provide marketing infrastructure to enable rural produce. The SHGs initiatives of DWCD which mainly aims at economic empowerment of rural women and the products generated by these groups broadly conform to the products already marketed by KVIC are such products that KVIC has the expertise to market. Secondly, the KVIC is also implementing Rural Employment Generation Programme (REGP) and its entry into marketing of products produced by rural women will give KVIC a ready access to a large segment of rural women and help promote their employment.
As part of Government’s initiative to empower women living below poverty line and work towards their holistic development, the Department of Women and Child Development, has been implementing Swa-Shakti project (Rural Women’s Development and Empowerment Project). The project is in 335 blocks in 9 States since 1988 with funding from external agencies. Enlarging this activity further, the Government since year 2000, has also been implementing Swayamsidha in 30 States.
The thrust of these two programmes has been to facilitate economically weak women to come together and help themselves as a group and alleviate. The Self Help Groups (SHGs) usually comprising 15-20 women with like-minded objectives, were encouraged to undertake small savings and start micro-enterprises. The Government participation was limited to that of facilitator, to establish linkages with Banks, on-line Departments of the States and local self Governments and undertake Government initiatives.
The two programmes also built into it other ingredients necessary for the holistic development such as education, providing legal literacy, health and hygiene awareness and leadership training. To make the groups self sustaining and viable, they were encouraged to form clusters and federations to achieve economies of scale even while retaining their group identity.
The efforts have yielded dramatic results under both programmes. About 17,647 groups have been formed covering about 2.42 lakh women under Swa-Shakti in 9 States viz. Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Karnataka. Under Swayamsidha, a national level programme of 63,578 groups have been formed covering 9.29 lakh women. In fact, the groups have now come together to form clusters and federations. These clusters of SHGs are undertaking large number of micro-enterprises both on-farm and off-farm. They are producing products and have reached a stage where they can dispense with handholding by the Government but yet require assistance to ensure quality of their produce, its marketability and sale. Standardization of the products and its marketing would go a long way in making the micro-enterprises of women self-sustained and viable.
UM:SPS:NC
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