Three day National Workshop on SHG was held from 23rd-26th October 2005 at YMCA, Training Centre, Vivekanand Puram, Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu. In 1998 at Kanyakumari, we had started our first SHG “MALAR” and now it is reached up to 22000 Groups in around fifteen thousand villages of the twenty state of India.
Women participants from all the states were present in the three days long workshop on SHG. Participants were so enthusiastic that they want to learn each and ever, even a minute concepts of SHGs in the less time.
Over all workshop was of great success and some of the points are raised in this workshop are as under given:
International Context •Micro credit origin in failure of banking sector – No access to bank credit for landless, poorest, Dalits, poor women
•Convenient for poor borrower – approaching banks as group – not individual
•Also convenient for lender: Cost, effort and time of banks can be shifted to SHGs.
•Global experience with mc groups: Higher repayment rates & lower lender costs
•Win – win formula: Poverty, Women’s empowerment and lowered transaction costs for lenders
•MC summit in Washington D.C 1997 – mc to 10 crore of world’s poorest.
•2005 - International Year of Mc.
Indian Context •Advantage of SHG over Grameen model of microcredit
Tamilnadu Context •SHGs sponsored by NGOs (partnering with state) - Magalir Thittam •SHGs sponsored by NGOs (not-partnering with Mathi). •SHGs sponsored by BDO and DRDA •SHGs sponsored by banks directly: ICICI is example in Sn districts.
All groups deal with banks and government schemes a) SHG-bank linkage scheme b) SGSY
Problems faced by SHGs •Target mode of creation of groups to absorb SGSY loan – the game of ‘showing numbers’ – ‘our women’.
•Process of grading – day long affair – wasting time and energy of women
•Corruption of DRDA and BDO – infectious – spreads to SHG coordinators also
•Bank recovery of IRDP default of male relatives through SGSY – turning women against each other.
•Bank Manager check group accounts for linkage loans – consequences
•Banks demanding collateral on SGSY loans to SHGs - consequences
•Imposition of enterprise loan without markets – ‘No rains, no work’ – crises of agriculture
•Bias and preference for govt sponsored SHGs in loan schemes
•SHGs as electoral constituency of ruling parties
•Political co-option: Discouraging women’s participation in anti-govt agitation or public action
•NGO versus GONGO – NGOs as contractors of state programmes
•NGO as financial intermediary – another moneylender?
•NGO imposing service charges on SHGs
•Decision making by SHG leaders or by NGO director?
•Entrepreneurs or ‘women labourers’ in informal sector?
Some questions for Samata
•Participation of poorest women – landless, widows, older women, destitute
•Push-out and Drop-out from SHGs
•Loan access is not control – decision making
•Capacity building – accounting, enterprise management skills
•Gender equity in asset ownership
•Are men spending less & enjoying more leisure?
•Is women’s work burden increasing – Gender equity in work sharing
•Targeting women not enough – are we changing gender relations?
•Why are we mobilizing women – empowerment or repayment?
A few thoughts to end on
•Finance Minister & Indian budget – Up scaling linkage each year
•SHG as solution to poverty – A case of band aid for cancer?
•Declining credit to rural & agricultural sector
•SHGs as entry point – as means to end of mobilization of women for gender justice & social change.