Women Empowerment through Self Help Groups- the real fact- with respect to West Bengal, India

Women Empowerment through Self Help Groups- the real fact- with respect to West Bengal, India

West Bengal is slowly moving towards the socioeconomic take-off stage based on vibrant SHG movement throughout the State. Huge numbers of women ( through 4.5 lakhs SHGs registered under NRLM in West Bengal)  have been involved in the SHG movement by reducing their sociology-economic vulnerability and enhancing their self confidence, self esteem and dignity in a big way. The SHG movement witnesses success stories of many invisible forces (Women) of the State, which creates a ripple /spiral effect on the neighboring community and brought them in the movement too. The in-built social engineering mechanism of the Self Help approach is truly instrumental in bringing local resources; local organization and local leadership in to a single thread thus become an important parameter for inclusive social development based on the convergence of creativity, group dynamics and self management. The critical mass generates through SHG movement play a pivotal role in minimizing the Gender discrimination to some extent by drawing the attention of their male counterparts regarding their “would be” role in SHG based development. The vivacious participation of the women folk with responsible behavior places them in respectable position in the society. The incidences of Violence Against Women (VAW), early marriage, human trafficking, and liquor consumption--- are in the diminishing trend in the villages where SHGs are proactively leading the community development initiatives taking all section of the society in their favor.

Despite these overwhelming responses of our women folk in the SHG movement, the pale shadow of chronic poverty, especially social poverty, seldom becomes detrimental to the social fabric of our society. We are talking about Women’s empowerment, Women’s’ emancipation through SHG programme, does it really happened, if so, to what extent? It is the true fact that, SHG movement has created a history in terms of Women’s mobilization in India and in West Bengal in particular. There are plenty of examples where the women folk raised their voices against the odds and took lead role for the overall welfare of their groups as well as their respective community .At the same time it is also the fact that their counterpart i.e., Male members are utilizing their (Women’s) presence in the service delivery system to their (Men) favor and makes her wife/Mother/Sister as free delivery channel in receiving Credit/Subsidy/RF support from Bank, DRDC etc. Now the question comes, is it a willing transfer of resources or unwilling/compelled decision to hand over the benefit against their entitlement, to the male counterparts for the sake of family’s welfare. Do we think the Male members only, are responsible for the welfare of their family or it’s a joint responsibility? If the Women can take the risk of moving through the thorny path of  our society, why not then she be entrusted to take her own decision regarding her investment as per her planned action (consumption, production, emergency) / own venture to supplement her family income? Exmaplanary case studies are there which reflect transformation of immense inbuilt potentials of the women SHG members in to positive action in terms of village development, making violence free village, self reliance through livelihood/income generation activities, placing their legitimate rights to the right place at the right time to the right person, but few sporadic incidences are not sufficient enough for true empowerment, as I opine.

What are the bottlenecks of this transformation process? The field observation reflects the following:

• Gender sensitization is not all there at the family/community level.


• Women themselves perceived Gender discrimination as their ultimate fate.


• Relatively less literacy status (among women folk)is responsible in taking up real challenge of transformation.


• Asset based poverty(i.e., social, human, financial, natural, physical asset) is responsible in widening the Gender gap despite significant growth of SHGs in West Bengal.


• The percentage of BLAD ( between the life and death)and low deficit category of vulnerable members (SHG), especially in Government identified eight backward villages are highly deprived in receiving the real benefit of SHG movement, especially in terms of asset building, livelihood generation, financial services, social and economic decision making.


• The SHG movement in the State, instead of its steady progress, especially for last 10 years drew considerable attention to the Bankers, P&RDD, SHG/SE Ministry, NABARD and Policy makers for relatively small credit flow to the SHGs and the inability of the Groups as well as the members to initiate Micro enterprises and sought their co-operation in minimizing the gaps in implementation of the SHG program irrespective of the delivery models. Despite this effort the situation remains same, and the SHGs are not in a position to transform in to an Entrepreneurial SHGs thus become dormant in the decision making process vis a vis empowerment process. Apparently the SHG members through their group corpus and tiny bank support are mitigating their emergent needs but that is not sufficient enough to make them free from the clutches of money lenders. Off course, the exploitation of the village level money lenders has reduced to a significant extent but still they (Groups) are dependent upon local money lenders for big loans say Rs. 30, 000-50,000 or even more , as Banks are reluctant to extent credit support to individuals for the purpose like family occasion (marriage) , house building loan ---etc.


• Several field studies on SHGs in the state of West Bengal reveals that Savings seems to be the important pool factor /binding forces to the group members, simultaneously it was also observed that, inability of the Savings considered as a major factor for exodus from Group, which is really paradoxical and needs further research for deeper insights of the fact .If Savings is considered as a major contributing factor of mobilization , how then it would be further consolidated to enhance the social , financial, physical capital led to empowerment? For the real empowerment of the resource poor community it is thus essential to evolve a self propelling own support system which would be proactively coordinate among the available resources, organizations, livelihood system with appropriate livelihood framework that would able to cope /recover the shocks and could sustain the resource base for future sustenance. This strategic intervention is unfortunately missing in the SHG based development program, and the women folk are not in a position for economic decision making leads for relatively less empowered what it should be actually.

Against this backdrop, we should go for Gender Empowerment Assessment (GEA) for the SHGs to judge their magnitude of empowerment. The field observation reveled that, so far the Practical Gender Needs (PGN) are concerned, some sort of positive changes have been occurred in the Gender relation in terms of attainment of traditional/conventional role of the Women, i.e., Women are using bicycles for selling of vegetables, going to neighboring town, markets, carrying their kids to Schools ---etc. In the vocational training some sort of uncommon trend has been observed in the trade like motor driving, motor mechanic –etc, this is traditionally a Gender based vocation, especially in West Bengal scenario. Apart from this sort of sporadic incidences, the real empowerment still remains a question, and much more steps to be   taken for Capacity Building/skill development, Gender sensitization, Micro Enterprise Development for the SHGs in transforming them in to a vibrant/strong/empowered SHGs wherein the members (mostly Women) themselves would take their own decision on their own life and livelihood based on SHG based inclusive social development paradigm

• Shri. Subrata Sarkar


•  India


• Date-17.10.2018