Jaago – Department of Self Help Group and Self Employment, Government of West Bengal

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Case Study

JAAGO is a scheme under Department of Self Help Group & Self Employment (SHG&SE), Government of West Bengal for supporting all the graded self-help groups of the State or SHGs accessing bank credit through a modest annual revolving fund support of Rs 5,000/-. This ‘no strings attached’ funding support is expected to give a boost to the empowerment of the groups. Known as Jaago, the project has a target to cover close to one million SHGs of the state.

The is distributed among the approximately 10 lakh SHGs spread across the state and is expected to directly benefit about a crore women. In 2020-21, 8,09,463 SHGs could be disbursed with Rs. 4,047 cr involving Six vertical Departments and 23 districts.

The eligibility criteria are: 

• All groups received cash credit limit or term loan or
• All graded groups or
• All groups matching the following conditions:
  • 1 Year from formation of SHG or 6 months from opening of an account whichever is earlier an and
  • Minimum deposit of Rs. 5000/- in the account

The objectives of Jaago are: 

• Participation of women in economic decision making
• Greater participation of women in social issues 
• Developing thrift habit
• Integration of  women force with MGNREGS, H&FW, Social Welfare 
• Access to Governance through toll free helpline of  missed call/SMS based 
• Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) involving no separate application

Process

• Collection of data from the Departments who form  SHGs
• Validation with de-duplication
• Auto exclusion if eligibility criteria does not match 
• Integration with Finance Department for DBT 
• SMS after payment

Features

While on the one hand, the project envisages horizontal convergence with all the State Government Agencies forming SHGs, it converges vertically with all stakeholder officers at the District level. There is complete digital convergence by integration with IFMS portal. Need for separate application by SHG concerned no longer exists. 

Innovative Aspects

• Database: Huge database of all women SHGs at one place cutting across Departments with relevant details 
• Partnership building: Women SHGs are now partners in fighting social menace, health care and hygiene, mass education, afforestation, spreading awareness for any cause  
• Digital presence: The portal is developed dynamically for making it more and more user friendly. Apart from the stakeholder Officers, feedbacks from the IT students have been taken and implemented

Stakeholders

• State Government Departments 
• Own department users 
• District officials
• Citizen (Self Help Groups)
• National Informatics Centre (NIC) 
• IT students like those from BITS Pilani etc

There has been more than 2.5-old increase in the number of SHGs with an equivalent increase in the number of members belonging to SHGs. There has been an 11-fold increase in the amount of cash advance money. 

Achievements

• Financial Assistance given to 747,688 SHGS in 2019-20
• 3,738,440,000 total Financial Assistance in 2019-20
• Financial Assistance given to 809,463 SHGS in 2020-21
• 4,047,315,000 Total Financial Assistance 2020-21
• 80.9 lakh Women SHG members got benefited out of the target of 1 crore
• During COVID Jaago has encouraged the Women SHGs to take up micro initiatives like Mask making, sanitiser making and household based economic activities
• Gender sensitive approach by encouraging the poor women to unite and take up income generating activities
• Workspaces for activities are provided in built up infrastructures like Karmatirthas, Common Facility Centres, Common Production Centres and for micro-initiatives even in their backyards
• With the empowerment of women, the index of primary education, age of marriage, spacing between two offspring etc has grown up gradually

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For more information, please contact:
Mr Avika Chattarjee, Deputy Secretary at avikrana69@gmail.com

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