The Odia Model for Women's Self-Help

The Odisha government's Mission Shakti scheme is quietly transforming millions of women's lives in the hinterlands by helping them surpass gender barriers and making them financially independent

- By ROMITA DATTA

The ill-lit, tunnel-like room is littered with coir and ropes. A humming machine drowns all other sounds. Then, as the eye adjusts itself to the gloom, the 12 women-some making ropes, some fashioning other objects-become clearer. Before one's eyes, their nimble fingers shape intricate handicrafts. Forty-five-year-old Kavita Sahoo, who started this enterprise with a handful of members in 2006, is now a successful entrepreneur. Sahoo, whose life was once steeped in poverty, now earns Rs 40,000 a month after all expenses including fair salaries to her staff. She is a beneficiary of the Odisha government's Mission Shakti scheme, a women's empowerment initiative that, in over two decades, has transformed the lives of lakhs of women by giving them independent incomes. At a time when states shower doles to secure women as a votebank, Mission Shakti brings them together into women's self-help groups (SHGS)-the backbone of the scheme that make and provide various goods and services. For this, the women are trained in diverse skills, government loans are provided, repayment is insisted upon and rewarded, and business is guaranteed. The ambit of operations is wide-ranging: from farm-related activities to banking operations and public distribution system dealerships. A scheme close to the heart of Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik, Mission Shakti (MS) has provided the spark that has unleashed the hitherto untapped entrepreneurial talents of women in the hinterland. In all, 7 million women (15 per cent of the population) have benefitted, helping them to live with financial security. If one includes the privileges accruing to families, the MS scheme has touched the lives of 28 million people half of Odisha's population.

It's heartening when these women tell us how respected they feel when people address them as 'madam'" -SUJATHA KARTHIKEYAN Secretary, Mission Shakti, Odisha government