Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has hailed Kerala’s Kudumbashree mission as a “unique model” for empowering women and said that the government is working to “replicate” it in other states.
He said at a seminar that a very senior official from Kerala would soon join his ministry and one of the tasks to be given would be to “see how the Kudumbashree movement can be replicated in other parts of the country.”
Sources said that senior IAS official Saradha Muraleedharan who was executive director of Kudumbashree is to join the ministry soon and might be entrusted with the responsibility.
The minister said Kudumbashree is the only self-help group movement in India, which is fully integrated to the Panchayati Raj. Ramesh observed that 40 per cent of women's self help groups in India were in Andhra Pradesh and they got Rs 6,000 crore a year from banks whereas the yearly live-linkage of women’s self groups in Kerala was only Rs 1,600 crore.
However, he said that the women's self-help groups in Kerala were fully integrated to the Panchyati Raj system whereas, in case of Andhra Pradesh, they were separate.
The Kudumbashree programme was launched by the government in 1998 for wiping out absolute poverty from the state through concerted community action under the leadership of local self governments. The programme, which has 37 lakh members and covers more than 50 per cent households in Kerala, is built around three critical components -- micro credit, entrepreneurship and empowerment.
1998 for wiping out absolute poverty from the state through concerted community action under the leadership of local self governments. The programme, which has 37 lakh members and covers more than 50 per cent households in Kerala, is built around three critical components -- micro credit, entrepreneurship and empowerment.