A Little Support Enables Women Increase Income

This is the story of 13 women united by Radhe-Radhe self-help group. Confined to four walls of their homes and having little interaction among them, all these women knowing little tailoring transformed the fate of their families by their sheer hard labour and perseverance. Today each of these women earns nearly Rs 4,000 a month.

These women belong to Parasrampura village of Jhunjhunu district. As everywhere in Rajasthan, these women were busy doing household chores and rearing children and cattle. They had not even remotest idea of savings, banking, income, etc. Most of the men in the village work as a labourer and in other countries.

It was difficult, to begin with, bring women to a meeting point. After considerable efforts a meeting of nearly 100 village women was organised. Thirteen women who knew a little bit of tailoring, were motivated to form the SHG, which, as mentioned above, came to be known as Radhe-Radhe SHG. The SHG account was opened and group processes initiated. Soon women started doing banking operations and their fear of loaning was gone. They decided to promote tailoring operations on a large scale as an income generation activity.

Soon the local branch of ICICI Bank, where the group had account, sanctioned a loan of Rs 1.30 lakh to promote their income generation activity. While they started returning the loan instalments on a regular basis, they arranged Rs 50,000 from the project under which this activity was going on. Out of this money they purchased bag sewing machines. The project imparted cloth bag production training.

With this skill each woman started earning Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 per month. Fortunately, market for raw material as well as finished product is available nearby.