Role of Self Help Groups in Rural Employments of India: A Case Study of Swarn Jayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojna

Abstract

Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana is an employment programme designed to stimulate self- employment activities and ensure that every assisted Below Poverty Line (BPL) family - SWAROJGARI - is able to earn a minimum monthly income of 2000 within three years. It aims to achieve this objective by encouraging families to engage in income-generating activities and by providing assistance through a combination of wages, technical capacity building and a package of financial assistance that includes institutional credit and subsidy. In 1999, SGSY was formed from a merger and restructuring of the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) and allied skills generation programmes, namely Training for Rural Youth for Self Employment (TRYSEM), Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWRCA), Supply of Toolkits in Rural Areas (SITRA), Ganga Kalyan Yojana (GKY) and Million Wells Scheme (MWS). Similar to the IRDP, the target group of SGSY consists of small and marginal farmers, agricultural labourers, rural artisans and others whose annual family income is less than the BPL income level. IRDP focused on credit provision to individual beneficiaries, while SGSY focuses on skills development of groups and clusters to improve the use of credit and asset acquisition. It promotes group activities that can increase forward and backward linkages and provide The group should be able to collect the minimum voluntary saving amount from all the members regularly in the group meetings. The savings so collected will be the group corpus fund. The group corpus fund should be used to advance loans to the members. The group should develop financial management norms covering the loans, sanction procedure, repayment schedule and interest rate. The group should operate a group account preferably in their service areas bank branch so as to deposit the balance amounts left with the group after bursting loans to its members. The group should maintain simple basic records such as minute's book,