Implementation of the SGSY Scheme:Need for a New Orientation to Administration

This paper discusses the issues involved in the implementation of the SGSY scheme based mainly on the experiences of the writer during her tenure as Additional Collector and Project Officer, DRDA, Tiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu. It argues that the self-help group approach to self-employment under the prevalent circumstances is not viable, principally because these groups have been formed as savings and lendings groups and not as entrepreneurial groups. Further, the lacuna in terms of capacity-building, credit linkages, the problems of inclusion and exclusion, etc., have been discussed in depth to point out crucial issues in the implementation of the scheme.

In the last section of the paper, the way forward has been discussed. The paper proposes that a new orientation to administration is needed, which includes the concept of reaching out to each and every beneficiary and not merely the enumeration of a few success stories. The need for professionally competent team of administrators, realistic project duration, mapping of activities and their monitoring, individual choice in the selection of opportunities through a process of decentralisation and finally better use of Information and Communication Technologies to monitor the scheme have been emphasized upon. In short, it has been proposed that the administration has to facilitate and monitor the group in the economic activity, rather than choose and direct the activity by itself. It is proposed that by the adoption of this new orientation, it is possible to achieve wide-spread impact of the scheme.

It is sometimes contended that the various forms of subsidies to/for the poor are a cost a society has to necessarily pay if its market laws and rules in normal circumstances are not efficient enough to usher in an acceptable level of equity in the distribution of income among its members. Hence, the pertinent question would not be whether the activities pursued with state subsidies on various counts are really profitable in abstraction of these subsidies but whether through all these subsidies, it had been possible for the members of SHGs to earn the envisaged few bucks more as compared to their earlier state and thereby it brought increased share of their consumption in the GDP.

However, a deeper analysis would suggest that for the sustainability of the enterprise, the group/individual has to be fully aware of the costs, irrespective of who bears them. Subsidies can be withdrawn at any stage; resources, being limited, may be re-distributed to the next claimant. However, the cost of the enterprise remains to be borne. Hence, it is extremely necessary that the enterprises become as self-sufficient as possible from the beginning; if not, their sustainability and profitability, and with them, the hopes of poverty alleviation of many women, would be jeopardised. Moreover, there is no concrete evidence to suggest that the infusion of the subsidies consistently have led to either sustainable enterprises or to any significant increase in family income.