Here are some stories that help shine a light on how positive change is happening from the ground up, thanks to the inspirational done by community workers and leaders.
Improving Maternal and Infant Health
Set up in 2007 with the support of the World Bank as a women-focused, poverty alleviation initiative, the Bihar-based JEEViKA program has helped create one million women’s self-help groups (SHGs) consisting of more than 12 million women. The SHGs’ objective has been to include women from poor rural households in economic activities, by providing them with ready access to financial instruments and markets, while improving their nutrition and health practices.
Poonam Devi, mother of a nine month old son Vishal, is a member of one such JEEViKA SHG. She says community mobilizers from SHGs have done a great job raising awareness about maternal and newborn healthcare in her village. “With my first child I didn’t know how important it was to give newborns only breastmilk in the first six months. We used to give my daughter, Sakshi, tinned milk and as a result she used to frequently fall sick. But now due to the advice from SHGs I know what to do to keep my infant son healthy and well,” Poonam says. She also says she wants other women to adopt similar practices to ensure that both they and their babies grow healthy and strong.
Community centered initiatives of this kind across several parts of the country are playing a key role in lowering India’s maternal mortality and infant mortality rates and helping keep mothers and newborns in better health. This has an empowering effect on improved life chances—from children’s ability to attend and remain in school for longer to the expanded opportunity for women to participate more fully in economic activities.
Expanding Financial Inclusion
The phenomenon of village banking correspondents in Andhra Pradesh exemplifies how rural families’ lives are positively transformed. Jyoti works as a banking officer in a village in Vijayawada. “I help agricultural workers who spend long hours at the farm have ready access to their bank accounts from 6am to 9pm in the night,” she says. Being able to check their accounts, take loans, and withdraw money at odd times of the day is proving to be a big support to agricultural workers. “Having this job has also provided me with financial independence to do what I want with my money and invest it for my future,” Jyoti adds.
Innovative models like these have helped banking outlets in villages grow by around 52 percent between 2021 and 2022. This has bumped up the household sector’s gross savings to 11.5 percent, which in turn helps improve credit flow to the country’s rural economy.
Fostering Women's Empowerment
Improved maternal and child health outcomes, along with more reliable access to financial tools and banking, are also fueling women’s employment and empowerment. A UP-based community leader from Amethi, Sangeeta is an example of this shift. As a social saheli and entrepreneur, Sangeeta has helped provide several rural women jobs through her small-scale pickle business.
She says, “I am keen that more women join my pickle-making company, so they gain financial independence and my business also grows.”
To help spread the word about her products, Sangeeta attaches a QR code, which helps consumers learn more about her business and provides an incentive to join her initiative. “I am very proud that my small business is empowering so many women to earn an income and be financially independent,” she says. “I have big plans for my products and hope we can take it to the rest of the world,” she adds.
In the context of the government’s push for an Atmanirbhar Bharat, initiatives like Sangeeta’s hold great significance. The Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) segment is at the forefront of this drive to improve self-reliance, and as of 2022, more than 63 million MSMEs contributed nearly 29 percent to India’s GDPGDP.
Transforming Farming
The aspiration to achieve greater self-reliance and economic growth leveraging technology also informs efforts in the agricultural sector. Kanta Prasad Kushwaha, a farmer from Hamirpur, UP talks of how time-consuming and backbreaking it used to be to work mainly with his hands on the farm.
Now with the help of innovative machines, not only does it take less time to till and plough the land, but he also reaps the benefits of greater yield without the risk of extreme fatigue and exhaustion. “Thanks to modern machinery, we now get to use pesticides more evenly, lower our cost of labor and improve our production efficiency,” he says. Aimed at helping small and marginal farmers of the country streamline and improve their farm processes and income, innovative agricultural companies like Bangalore-based Kamal Kisan are proving to be game-changers.
Innovation, creativity, human stories, and the power of communities have played a significant role in making India the country it has become. Moving forward, these will continue to be pivotal in ndia’s growth and development.
