Bihar keen to replicate Kudumbasree initiative

The Bihar team members say lack of support from the government has affected initiatives to empower rural women in the State.

A team from the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society visiting a micro-enterprise of the Swathi Kudumbasree unit in Nenmeni grama panchayat.

A team from Bihar that visited the State to study the functioning of Kudumbasree units in the district concluded its six-day tour on Sunday.

The five-member team from the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (BRLPS) is part of a 32-member delegation visiting five districts in the State, including Kollam, Ernakulam, Thrissur and Idukki. The team reached here on July 29 to study the structure and functioning of Kudumbasree activity units as well as the operations of micro-enterprises at the grassroots level.

The visit was organised as a part of a pilot project to set up a similar organisation in Muzafirpur and Gaya districts in Bihar to empower rural women.

The project is being executed by the National Resource Organisation of Kudumbasree and BRLPS, said P.P. Muhammed, district coordinator, Kudumbasree Mission.

“We visited close to 15 Kudumbasree units and collected information on the functioning of the organisation,” team leader Bijendra Singh, area coordinator of the BRLPS in Bodh Gaya block panchayat in Gaya district, told The Hindu .

Micro-enterprises

The delegation also visited various micro-enterprise units under the Kudumbasree along with A.K. Sivapradeep, a mentor micro-enterprise consultant of Kudumbasree Mission.

Mr. Singh said lack of support from the government had affected initiatives to empower rural women in Bihar. Though the government had constituted self-help groups for rural women in 28 of the 38 districts of Bihar in 2007 under the Jeevika project of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, income-generating operations were yet to be launched there, he said.

There are 1,695 SHGs functioning in Bodh Gaya block alone.

The functioning of grama panchayats was only for namesake and not a single grama panchayat had built an office building of its own, he added.

Rajesh Ranjan Bharati, a micro-enterprise consultant in the team, said they would do their best to constitute an organisation similar to Kudumbasree to eradicate famine and empower the rural youth, especially women, in Bihar.

The visit was held in connection with the final stage of a six-month training programme being organised jointly by the Kudumbasree State

Mission and BRLPS for area coordinators and micro-enterprise consultants of the BRLPS.

The team will leave for Bihar on Monday after discussions with the representatives of the National Resource organisation of the Kudumbasree and BRPLS in Kochi.