Wednesday, January 27, 2010
FAILURE OF SHGs….WHY?
During my field work in Toranmal village of Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, I came across a very strange situation i.e. a complete failure of SHGs related to many livelihood opportunities in the village due to one reason or the other. When I talked to the people working in the organization looking after the village projects, they said that SHGs are working properly in the nearby villages but they are not working in this village. This was an example of failure of collective action or a village failure to cooperate. I am still searching for the reasons. Please help me out.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Success or failure of a SHG or in that case, any collective action depends on a number of factors. Best example is the Anand pattern, which could not be replicated properly elsewhere. So, apart from people, village history, background of people, traditions & culture of that village, willingness of villagers, availability of resources, etc. play an important role in success of SHG.
I agree that all these factors affect the success or failure of an SHG but these factors were similar to the villages nearby. Since all the villages were tribal consisiting of the same tribe and following same traditions and having same culture, this justification does not hold.
@Utsav:
The social conditions which prevail in Toranmal might be a reason behind this. To quote some officials of an NGO working in the area, "Brothers are the biggest enemies in Toranmal".
There could be various reasons behind this but I think this has turned the social situation in the village to be one of conflict.
Also, as explained in today's session of UO, people are reluctant to change when they are comfortable with it. This is something which was noticed in my village also for any new initiatives taken by the NGO.
The failure in my view can be reduced to the two broad reasons. one the sustainability of the activities undertaken and the accessibility to the other people. pertaining to the Tornmal the large section of underprivileged people were kept apart intentionally or unintentionally. those who were the member where having strong livelihood options available. Most of the groups were formed to avail the govt. schemes. Morover, there can be interpersonal issues within the members that might have led to the failure of shgs.
One plausible reason could be the negligible stake of the members of the SHGs in the startup of the various livelihood interventions. As mentioned by Patil Sir all the investment in the restaurant had been made by BAIF. The SHG members were supposed to run it and earn profits. As there was not much at stake all the members may not have been motivated enough to work hard. Another reason could be the inability to see long term benefits of the restaurant for the group as a whole. As already mentioned personal animosities added to the failure.
@ Abhijit
I agree that social conditions is one of the reasons but the question arises that why these social conditions are prevalent in a particular village while not in other villages of the same region?
@ Ajay
When it comes to sustainability, it's like a chicken n egg problem. Failure of SHGs could be one of the reasons which made the interventions unsustainable or Unsustainability could have led to failure. So, it's difficult to attribute it to sustainability.
@ Neha
The explanation given by you holds completely valid for the interventions started for individual families like the traditional restaurant but for SHGs, the stakes(though not very high) were there like in a Fishing SHG. Kindly think over it again.
me also being a part of the maharashtra team understand the social and geographical condition of toranmal which can be a reason for the faliure of the SHGs there. due to the difficult terrain of the region it was very difficult for the NGO volunteers to have a regular report and feedback of the working of the SHGs which is very important as this only keeps the members motivated and the improvements can be followed then after. also as we discussed with patil sir the people there where closed to any change and therefore to convince them to take up a new initiative is a difficult task. one of the tendencies which i observed in the villagers is that the don't believe in savings and always look for immidiate benefits so this can also be one reason of they not forming SHGs.
aditi(p30001)
Post a Comment