1. What are the lessons learnt from the case study?

The case offers an overview on positive influence of Self-help groups on women

empowerment, especially in small towns and villages. Below points can be inferred:
a. India being one of the fast-growing countries in the world and the 6th strongest
economy in the world, still most of the women in the rural area are illiterate,
exploited and abused in the name of domestic violence.
b. Women Empowerment is a process of awareness that enables them to actively
participate, hold greater decision-making power and control one’s action.
c. SHGs (Self Help Groups) is a tool to empower the women as for a nation to progress
and become a superpower, women are needed to lead from the front and free from
any kind of discrimination. It provides them a platform to speak up and open about
their problems.
d. The SHGs in India helps women in dealing with Prohibition of liquor, rape, child
marriage, female infanticide, sexual abuse, domestic violence, male alcoholism
through collective activities.
e. When a woman becomes a member of SHG, her sense of public participation,
enlarged horizon of social activities, high self-esteem, self-respect and fulfillment in
life expands and enhances their quality of stature in society.
f. Along with SHGs, the NGOs, educational institutes and social service organizations
have helped people to upskill them, making them employable and changing their life
to livable and at par with others and have helped them to get away from debt trap.
g. Despite so many rules and regulations in place, India is still struggling to empower its
women population.

2. How will you include these learnings to rural development activities?

As we are aware that India is still lagging behind when it comes to development of its
rural population which consists all most 70% of its population but their contribution to
GDP is only 17% but there is huge gap between the opportunities, living standard of rural
and urban people.
The objective of rural development: To reduce the gap, we need to find the issues of
the village like infrastructure, education, health, natural resources, gender issues,
economic deprivation and sanitation.
The learnings to solve the issues:
1. Creating awareness of governmental schemes.
2. After identifying the potentially employable population, we need to make those people
actively participate in upskilling programs.
3. Form SHGs with the help of local NGOs and educational institutes. Empower the
youth, women and elderly people to actively participate in those initiatives, have greater
decision-making ability and control their action.
4. Help them make employable by giving them proper training and increasing economic
activity to uplift them.
5. Introduce new and efficient technologies to reduce pollution.
6. Contact local government officials to implement the SHG tool effectively without any
biases.
7. SHGs should be involved in manufacturing raw materials for industries across the
country with the help of local resources especially with SC,ST people and SHGs should
be promoted through social media, tvs, radios and publishing their success stories.
8. One of the most important things is that the financial institutes, banks, micro financial
companies should be providing loans to encourage rural people to start their own
business ventures.