Mission Shakti empowering women in Odisha

By Pradeep Kumar Panda

Bhubaneswar, August 6: Women account for about half of the entire informal sector’s workforce and given access to credit and market linkage, these marginalized women can generate such enterprises. Experiences of poverty eradication programmes in early 1980s articulated that women’s micro and small-scale enterprises can provide an opportunity to accelerate economic activities.

Experiences across the world show that credit and market linkages are important to create gainful economic activities for women. Group based credit access and economic activities began to emerge as a successful alternative to large scale intervention programs. Thus, Government of Odisha launched Mission Shakti a programme in 2001 with an aims of strengthening WSHGs at Panchayat, Block and District levels through the capacity building.

Mission Shakti has been a flagship programme of Government of Odisha initiative for women empowerment. It has been riding through women Self Help Groups (WSHG) towards its mission goal. Achieving women empowerment in a state like Odisha suffering from regular calamities is a great challenge before Government of India and Odisha both. There has been multi prong approaches to make women prominently visible in development scene of Odisha. However it is again another gigantic task before Government, corporate, academies and NGOs.

While we find in the area of self-Government i.e. in Gram panchayat somehow women have good presence in Odisha, we find challenges of low active participation of women in influencing panchayat in favour of women development and practically 70% of them are used as dummies in the hands of influential men or politicians. In addition to this there are other discrepancies’ and problems related to women development and their empowerment.

Empowerment always leads to making people responsible. They would be responsible for what they are and what they will be. They will remain responsible what they do and what they reap from their behaviours or actions. Accordingly their standard of living will be influenced. Therefore making people responsible for all the developmental process, the output and desired changes always remained as priority area for all the Govt. Odisha has almost 50% women against total population. Out of them more than 70 lakh women are directly involved in WSHGs activities. Promoting WSHGs in Odisha was started to bring financial freedom and social visibility of women. It was also having aim to exercise and showcase women strength against social evils. Later this made a significant establishment of the fact that financial power of women and their organisation building through SHG gateway could successfully made great visibility in social and livelihood development sector.

WSHGs created as an exclusive supplementary credit delivery mechanism, was not sustainable or had limited success. So “Mission Shakti” has been a campaign for holistic empowerment of women. It was launched with a target to organize 2 lakhs Women Self Help Groups (WSHGs) covering all revenue villages of the State. Since the formation of WSHGs has crossed 2 lakhs by 2008 and till date (August 2023), more than 6 lakh SHGs have been formed. Women at large have displayed great strength in the success of the Mission due to their positive contribution to the group dynamics and their natural inclination for savings. Since its inception, Mission Shakti has been working holistically to encompass different aspects of women empowerment through SHG moments. These include expansion of credit linkage to as many SHGs as possible so that SHGs have paid-up capital to start economic activities.

This also requires capacity building of SHGs in accounting, livelihood activities, skill up-gradation in employment generation activities. Products made by WSHGs require standardisation, quality control and good marketing. Mission Shakti activities focuses on capacity building, livelihood promotion, consolidation through strengthening federation, micro credit support, convergence with other departments and government progrmmes, marketing, addressing social issues, communication and advocacy. Mission Shakti rests on the concept of micro credit to the poor members of the society by organizing them into group WSHGs. The idea is being self-help through mutual help. For the purpose of capacity building of WSHG members, the WSHGs are categorised into priority groups depending upon their potential, utilization of available resources and linking these to domestic and national market. The major areas of operation include Micro credit, Entrepreneurship Development, Livelihood security, Agriculture & Allied, Health, Hygiene & Sanitation, Capacity building and resource management and IT and education.

While Mission Shakti was concentrating on above priorities, at the grassroots level in villages and urban slums women SHGs of poor families were trying to make strong impact on addressing the problems of dowry torture, domestic violence, low literacy, liquor issues, weak social status, long demand for political power and many other social maladies. As the consequence, as of today, rural women have at least better status. Now they have good presence in panchayts, watershed organisations, actively participating in livelihood promotion many Govt agencies. There is a definite, although slow, rise of girls’ attendance in schools and higher classes in schools. Entitlements meant for women, girl children and old women are at least well discussed by Gram panchayats. Many attempts are made to address the violation of entitlements under the able guidance and leadership of Mission Shakti at state and district level. Many such issues and cases came to the light and Govt of Odisha made necessary efforts to solve those too through policy changes and administrative directions.

Mission Shakti has taken up strategies like Formation and strengthening of WSHGs, Institutionalization of WSHGs effort through federating them at Panchayat, block and district level, Building up the capacity of those institutions (from SHGs to Federations), Strengthening livelihood measures and consolidating the efforts to ensure the sustainability of the initiatives, Efforts to ensure market linkage to SHG products across the state and nation and Convergence with different Govt. Departments in the state.

The success story of Mission Shakti can be evidenced from the fact that, starting from a scratch, today the movement has been able to form 3,72,748 WSHGs comprising of 44,72,976 members with a credit advance of Rs.1294.44 crores and savings of Rs.239.93 crores. A total of 7607 federations at Panchayat, Block and District levels have been formed on the basis of their functional compatibility. In terms of credit and savings, the mission has been able to provide credit to about 90% of WSHGs located in almost every village of Odisha and the banks have provided a credit of Rs.1294.44 crores. It is worth mentioning here that 48,332 WSHGs could go for a repeat finance to the tune of 231.38 crores.

In banking sector of Odisha every Tuesday has been declared as WSHG day adding impetus to this unique movement. More than Rs.52,00,00,000/- has been given as one time financial aid to about 2.54 lakh WSHGs through Govt. of India’s self-employment Scheme viz.,“Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana”.

Mission Shakti has multi prong approaches to financial inclusion of all the families and in particular women. To ensure this and to run with the time efficient and meaningful trend building was another approach. Thus educating children, reducing drop outs, ensuring children and parents’ participation in literacy building, preparing children to be responsible for future progress; there has been several Govt and NGO initiatives. Women SHGs have very actively participating in those programmes which have been proved to be very much beneficial to the children, parents, families and villages. Thus livelihood sector in villages are directly or indirectly influenced for this reason too. Women are now confident of food availability to their children and now not worried for that. Therefore they are at least able to either go for work without stress or they feel free from this expenditure which is spent on either cloth or health of family or in emergencies. The overall impact is directly on the livelihood and family income.

To ensure cent percent literacy, Govt. of India launched free Mid-Day Meal (MDM) scheme to attract the unprivileged and underfed pupil to the primary schools. The lackadaisical progress was owing to pilferage and lack of accountability by the food vendors. Thus Govt. of Odisha took the exemplary and innovative move of tagging WSHGs for providing MDM in 39,229 primary schools, with increased success and transparency. This has made tremendous progress in decreasing dropout rate in primary education and ensured attendance of students too. This has tremendous impact on reducing child labour number. The health and nutrition issues are also managed to a better extent than earlier arrangements.

It was also found in various occasions that families are now investing in girls education too. These SHGs could make a visible impact on education administration, regular monitoring of children and their learning behaviour, vigilant inclusion of nutritious and healthy food substances, direct involvement and sharing of information on school administration among themselves and family members etc are the major outcomes of the intervention. This also increased the inclusion of SHGs produced food materials. Thus there is a reduction of transport cost towards availing food grains and required materials for MDM programme.

This programme could involve women in education process and added value to their social status too. They are now aware of value and importance of higher education and better skill development. It generates interest among them to participate in other institutions of village where they have a role of decision making and showcase their contribution in development process. In most of the cases these WSHGs have very active role in Village Education Committee too. Regular monitoring of education institutions and their performance has been mostly ensured because of the leadership of those WSHGs.

Now women responsible for this programme are equally responsible, alert and active as men in those locations in the health and education sector. Thus awareness on importance of education, establishing social presence of women, ensuring the facilities meant for children in healthy and corruption free manner are the major outcomes of the intervention. Several cases are there where dropout girls could complete matriculation and went into higher education and excelled in their performances. This is the best indicator of the success made by WSHGs under MDM.

Yet another example of successful Public Private Partnership in the field of Public Distribution System (PDS) is handing over of retailing of Kerosene to 7293 WSHGs in Odisha, to ensure clean and timely public distribution. This reduced corruptive practices and increased the efficiency and efficacy of the system to a significant extent. It has brought down corruption and increased self confidence of women in villages. Once suppressed women could get strong arena to manage and sustain the business activities involve in the process.

Simultaneously, they ensured regular corruption free transparent system of making PDS good available to the people at grassroots level. In some cases they have ensured PDS goods available to the destitute women too those who have low purchasing capacity. They have ensured social security entitlements through lobbying and pressure creation on local administration and supported destitute underserved women in their locality. PDS operation could help them to understand and realize the socio-economic condition of the local people. It enhanced their sensitivity and responsiveness towards poverty reduction process. The beauty of humanity has been well expressed through their collective approaches in many cases across the time during their operations. This has spirited them to catch hold of corrupted stakeholders in the chain of operation thus reduced the ill effect of adulteration and artificial scarcity of PDS stuff.

Under “Shakti Gram Programme” 2137 WSHGs are currently engaged in distribution of LPG gas. SHGs involve in this programme made it corruption free, regular and transparent in nature. It is not only generating revenue but also established strong social capital which has gained trust of mass. In agriculture and allied sector, 6291 Panchayat Ponds have been leased out to the WSHGs for Pisciculture. That apart, the indigenous organic Kandhamal Turmeric has earned international acclaim for its quality, which is managed by WSHGs of that District.

More than 1200 Young women have been trained as Shakti Sahayika those who are suppose to work as business development service provider for both SHGs and their federations. They are trained on SHG formation, Federation Formation, Micro finance, Livelihood enhancement, women issues, legal and administrative entitlement, RTI, Food and nutrition, Govt policies, Entrepreneurship building, Business development, credit management, Financial literacy and so on. They have been engaged by SHGs and their Federations at village and block level to manage the records of SHGs, design the business proposals, network with primary producers, processing SHGs, and market, They are monitoring the development, linking credits from financial and non financial institutions and making efforts to impact on existing and new livelihood ventures.

The cause of health, hygiene and sanitation has been championed in the state by 654 WSHGs, who have been instrumental in making Total Sanitation Movement a great success. Moreover, WSHGs are actively involved in sensitising and supporting pregnant mothers for institutional delivery. As a result the IMR (Infant Mortality Rate) in Odisha has come down from 98 to 71 per thousand, in a consistent rate. Now across the state, household sanitation became the matter of dignity and good health. In remote villages of state there has been effort by WSHGs to ensure construction of independent household latrines for family use.

Pallishree and Gramashree Mela, the village fairs, are being organized in a collaborative approach by the Federations, Govt. Agencies & NGOs at district, state and national level to facilitate marketing of the WSHG products. The WSHGs in the tribal dominated districts have been supplying lentil (Kandula) for use in Mid Day Meals. As regards to information, technology and education, Mission Shakti has been publishing Shaktirupa, a quarterly journal in order to create awareness of various activities of this mission amongst the public. Discussions are being aired on various issues of women empowerment in form of Shaktirupa, a serial both in Television and Radio.

For capacity building of the members of the WSHGs multi-faceted training programmes are being regularly organized at all levels keeping in view the local available resources, service delivery and market needs. Mission Shakti has appointed a Mission Shakti coordinator in each block of the State and established a capacity building unit at the State in Consultants Cell. Further, training camps are held for development of entrepreneurship among SHGs and their Federations. Incentives are provided to federations for establishment of mini banks for dealing with micro finance.

In future, such ideas can be replicated in the field of agriculture and allied, healthcare, sanitation management and education. For effective management in these sectors lie in strong public private partnership (PPP). The reducing revenue collection has almost blocked the way for the State Govt. for implementing free public service and poverty alleviation programmes. Thus, it is high time that the WSHGs can effectively take-up developmental activities at grass root level in collaboration with the State Govt. in the aforesaid sectors.

The unique and innovative concept of Citizen Engagement and Service Delivery blended  with Women Empowerment showcased the best results of effective public private partnership in managing public sector services such as public distribution system, provision of Mid-Day-Meal in Primary Schools, infusion of habit of savings in citizen, best utilization of available natural resources through development of entrepreneurial skills etc.

The idea was to reduce corruption, increase accountability, render better quality service, reduction of pilferage and increment in transparency in public service sectors through enhanced citizen’s role, involvement and participation. The idea was translated into reality through WSHGs.

The impetus of the innovation was to empower women for maximal utilization of idle human resources for socio-economic growth among the poor and deprived. This was the need of the hour to bring back the women folk into main stream. Since women were the worst sufferers of gender bias, male dominance, child marriage, under education and non-encumbrance of parental property. Mission Shakti could make the women independent for decision making and ensure their social prestige through economic resurgence.

The technology was inaccessible due to paucity of funds at individual level and as such, production was least, chances of marketing remote. With available finance, technology would be translated into quality production and higher group production attracted traders across local and national level markets which could pay back better dividends against earlier once to the concerned individuals for the labour they invested.  The dark age of women has passed into history since Mission Shakti has brought luminescence to millions of women through their empowerment. For we believe that women once empowered can never be degraded again.

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