Promoting Inclusive Production and Growth Through Self Help Groups

This study surveyed beneficiaries over 2009-12 of a ‘Sustainable Livelihood’ oriented scheme, Swaran Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojna (SJSRY), launched in 1997. Funded by the Centre and the State in the ratio of 75:25, it aims to spawn micro enterprises, provide skills/training to individuals and Self-Help Groups and create a self-managed hierarchy of local management institutions with groups, societies and federations. The study compares the nature of human, social and physical capital generated within Self-Help Groups (SHG) sponsored by the municipal corporation with a control group of non-beneficiaries in the slums of Mumbai, to find that the beneficiaries experience an accelerated frequency of human and social capital formation. SHGs also invested in micro enterprises given access to credit and training. This is occurring despite the fact that beneficiaries were women at a lower income level, most having been targeted as poor by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. The survey finds that the SHG members are improving their human and social capital; the paper suggests policies to strengthen and replicate the policy in other urban centers where the poor are amassing. The sustenance of inclusive production is perhaps the only viable foundation of inclusive growth.