Like any other activities, Self-Help Group’s activities are not free from difficulties. The group members are facing various types of difficulties. These are like the followings (Table 16):
1) Financial problems: It includes shortage of fund, high rate of interest and lack of subsidy. There are some groups who operate their group/individual activities very well and they want to expand their activities. But they can not do it due to the shortage of fund. Banks give loan only 3-4 times of their group deposit. The amount of group deposit is not so high because, their monthly savings capacity is low. Therefore size of the loan is small. In this regard, banks should keep faith on those particular groups and the amount of loan should expand. The lack of subsidy is another financial problem of SHGs. The formation of SHGs is a social movement to promote the poorer towards
Agriculture Cattle Rearing Poultry Farming Dairy Farming Sari Manug. Paddy Stock Grocery Shop Internal External Bidi Binding Rakhi Binding Loan
regular way of economic production. So government should have some promotional assistance like subsidy to these new tiny enterprises. This however, may promote the groups to activate properly. It should be noted here that, there are some SHGs under SGSY project who get such type of inducement/subsidy. But still now, the SHGs under co-operative banks have not received any financial/material support except loan.
2) Family problem: It means existence of dependent members in the family, absent of crèche facility, non co-operation from other member/members of the family etc.
3) Bank related problem: It includes the process and/or timing of collection of loans from the members. Sometime it creates a vital problem for SHGs. The collection of loan by the co- operative societies is made per successive months after receiving loan. But like any other production units, earnings of SHGs also have some time lag. Very often this lag exceed one month. In those cases SHG’s members suffer from the immediate crisis of money which unfortunately forced them to go to any other persons for loan. So, formation of SHGs remains ineffective in this field unless the mode of collection of loan is changed. 4) Lack of Insurance facility: Frequently, SHGs are suffered from the damage of their product due natural calamity. Some time it makes the SHG members penniless and ultimately they fail to repay the loan. This problem is so dangerous that it may force one towards suicide. Only, the government’s initiative to provide some insurance facility for their product can protect these unintended defaulters.
5) Market related problems: In our study, some respondents express their opinion about the problem of communication with market. Accordingly, most of villages are far from local market and they have no infrastructure to preserve their product for a long time. So, they have to transport it immediately at a high cost particularly in rainy season.
6) Lack of training: This is the most significant problem of the group process. In our study, out of 1777 respondents 13.67 (76.93percent) have clearly expressed that they have got no technical guidance. And the residual portion of the respondents, unfortunately, knows nothing about the availability/non-availability of this facility. As a result, when we asked them about this
they remained silent. Although, we know that, government has some specific instruction to arrange some training through DRDA/Block office per year but the reality is not so. Actually, no training campaign has been organized by DRDA or any other NGOs to help/train the members. So this is a very important problem. We should take care about it.
7) Untouchability and religious rigidity: There are some members who mainly coming from SC/ST or minority section and engaged in mid-day meal preparation, point out a typical problem of purdah-system and untouchability attitude of certain section of the village society. Accordingly, some minority families impose various restrictions on their female members against joining in to the group activity. On the other hand some people of the villages often induce their children not to receive food prepared and distributed by low caste or minority women. 8) Problem of non co-operation: Some groups are there who facing the problem of mal-adjustment among the members. This is however due to lack of proper knowledge and advocacy in favour of group process.
Table – 16 : Difficulties Faced by Members
Types of difficulties No. of Respondents Percentage( out of
facing by the members Total population)
Financial Problem 1115 62.75
Family Related 543 30.56
Bank Related problem 134 7.54
Lack of Insurance 115 6.47
Market related 285 16.04
Source: Primary Data
General Requirements of SHGs
It should be noted here that, whatever the problems faced by the groups, they have some common requirements of solution from government, NGOs and/or co-operative societies. These are like reduction of loan interest, expansion of the size of loan, incorporate
them in to a product insurance system, an attainable easy market facility, a provision of subsidy and last of all they need some technical guidance through training and some promotional assistance. However it is obvious that women’s empowerment must be seen as a process where in we must consider women’s awareness, consciousness, and option with alternatives, resources at their disposal, voice, agency and participation. These are all related to enhancement of women’s capabilities and decisions they take individually or collectively for themselves. Considering all these aspects, our project indicates that in spite of some real difficulties faces by the groups, an ongoing process of women empowerment through SHG movement are taking place.