Self Help Group (where there is a will, there is a way – आत्म निर्भर भारत)
The poor people or poor households’ members in India are mainly dependent on unorganized sectors or informal sectors facing lots of problems or inconveniences for their earning or livelihood. It is very common to see that in order to start a business setup, one needs loan from Bank or Financial Institution. The poor people or poor household members do not have collateral and eligible documents to avail loan from Bank or Financial Institution. Apart from this, due to poor education of such people, there is no proper approach to Bank or Financial Institution for loan application. Although, loan gets availed easily from informer lenders (Traders or Money Lenders or Landowners or Relatives) whom they personally know, but in doing so they get exploited in further due course of time.
To get rid of this problem, the concept of Self Help Group (SHG) comes into existence. Generally, it is a group of, more or less, 15–20 like-minded persons and as per their potential, pool funds from their savings. Once the fund raised to a certain good amount, the same can be provided to group members as well as any other Individual (non-member) in the form of loan thus source of income as interest earned from it gets started. On further increase in the fund through collection from group members or income generated from interest earned, the Government Registration of SHG can be done after which Bank Account against the same can be opened in any Bank or Financial Institution. Once the account gets opened and on good performance related to its operational transactions, a confidence measure/trust measure will develop among SHG and Bank to avail loan facility for further expansion of business activities and other productive purposes. State Government and Central Government are also encouraging SHG through various sponsored schemes to generate income thus shows a good path to become self-reliant. The activities of SHG are mostly seen among women and so, it is a women empowerment platform also through which various meetings are also conducted and social issues like domestic violence, nutrition, etc are also discussed. Thus role of SHG in present-day scenarios is of great importance. In addition to women empowerment which makes members of SHG to get free from social constraints and allow them to make independent decisions, it also help in combating social evils like drug addiction, gambling, alcoholism, etc.
