The Prayas ePathshala

Exams आसान है !

09 May 2023

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DAILY QUESTIONS & MODEL ANSWERS

Q1. 1. Self Help Groups (SHGs) have grown crucial as a means of empowering women, but its potential hasn’t been completely realised because of a number of constraints. Analyse. (250 words)

Paper & Topic: GS II  SHGs/Women Empowerment

Model Answer:

Introduction:

  • A self-help group (SHG) is a committee of 10 to 20 local women or men that acts as a village-based financial intermediary. Small groups voluntarily provide for the needs of the financially vulnerable by raising, saving, and lending money on a micro scale when the formal financial system is unable to assist the needy. SHGs have achieved widespread attention in the majority of Asia’s emerging nations where they are fairly prevalent.

Body:

SHGs’ role in empowering women:

  • Capital formation: Through microfinance, many SHGs in rural areas have built up significant assets and capital that are supporting livelihoods.
  • financing availability: SHGs offer more readily available financing with reasonable and accessible terms. The members have had relatively simple access to loans for both emerging productive and non-productive reasons. This has significantly lessened their reliance on neighbourhood payday lenders.
  • Their financial inclusion and ease of access to credit from formal institutions is also expanding because to government initiatives like the SHG-Bank linkage programme.
  • Poverty Alleviation: The decentralization-based approach to poverty alleviation is now the most successful method and fits the continuing reform process.
  • SHGs have made it possible for the underprivileged to access microfinance, which has had a significant impact on how they may access credit, land, water, knowledge, and other productive resources.
  • Employment creation: SHGs have taken up self-employment activities such collective farming, beekeeping, horticulture, and sericulture.
  • Social welfare: There have been numerous instances where SHG women have banded together to successfully close bars in their community.
  • Infrastructure for rural areas: Programmes like Aajeevika express have aided SHGs in establishing transportation in remote areas.
  • Women’s empowerment: By managing the abundant natural resources, SHGs have been able to increase the talents of women to do a variety of activities.
  • The Self Help Groups (SHG) in India are thought to have benefited more than 25 million rural women.
  • As a group, they may teach each other a variety of skills, including money management, as the majority of women in rural areas lack basic financial literacy.
  • In Kerala, Kudumbashree has seen tremendous success. The Kudumbashree café is a prime example of how SHGs can encourage business.
  • They also serve as a delivery system for a variety of services like community development initiatives, livelihood promotion activities, and training for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Problems encountered:

  • There are problems including regional imbalance, an average loan amount that isn’t optimal, and a lack of monitoring and support for training from self-help group federations, among others.
  • increasing non-performing assets of bank loans to self-help groups.
  • Numerous studies have also discovered problems with their performance in terms of governance, quality, openness, and irregularities.
  • Low literacy rates among rural women.
  • The study discovered that because of problems with coordination, groups were breaking up over time.
  • SHG members’ rural microbusinesses face severe obstacles when trying to acquire top-notch professional help or raise finance for start-up, growth, and operating capital.

Steps to Take:

  • SHGs can be used to implement government programmes.
  • This will increase efficiency and transparency while also moving our society closer to Mahatma Gandhi’s ideal of self-government.
  • structural handholding support provided by self-help group promoting institutions (SHPIs) on a continuous basis.
  • Authorities from the Rural Development department may frequently hold awareness events to raise knowledge of various programmes.
  • Building everyone’s capacity on a regular basis will help the group function as a whole.
  • The government is investing in group member training for the shift to technological platforms as part of its focus on digital financial inclusion.
  • For these organisations to have the greatest possible influence on people’s means of subsistence, it is crucial to invest in the correct kind of support.
  • the SHG movement’s emphasis on women’s entrepreneurship as a growth driver in rural India.
  • Members should not be treated differently depending on their caste, religion, or political views.

Conclusion:

  • The SHG approach is a bottom-up, enabling strategy for rural development that has significantly benefited low-income households in developing nations in both economic and non-economic ways. The SHG concept, which combines a for-profit strategy that is self-sustaining and an emphasis on poverty alleviation that empowers low-income households, is being acclaimed as a sustainable instrument to tackle poverty. It is increasingly being used by governments in underdeveloped nations as a tool to implement developmental agendas.

Q2. The proportion of female lawmakers in the parliament is at an all-time high right now. However, as comparison to other nations, the number is still small. Make recommendations for ways to increase the presence of women in legislative bodies. (250 words)

Paper & Topic: GS II  Parliament related issues

Model Answer:

Introduction:

  • In India, the proportion of female MPs in the Lok Sabha is now at a historic high of 14.6% (78 MPs). India, however, desperately needs to feminise politics in order to boost the number of women representatives. Women would be involved in making decisions, sharing power, leading political parties, holding political office, and formulating policies at all levels of state governance.

Body:

Women’s participation in politics:

  • In terms of electoral representation, India, for example, dropped from 117 following the 2014 election to 143 as of January 2020 in the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s global ranking of women’s parliamentary presence.
  • India is now ahead of Sri Lanka (182) and behind Pakistan (106), Bangladesh (98), and Nepal (43) respectively.
  • Based on historical election trends and assuming no gender quota is introduced, such as the severely undermined and ignored Women’s Reservation Bill, scholars like Carole Spary and S M Rai estimated that it would take another 40 years for there to be 33% women in the Lok Sabha prior to the 2019 election.
  • India’s position in the other dimensions of the index—149th in economic participation and opportunity, 112th in educational attainment, 150th in health and survival, and 108th overall—is much worse than it is in terms of political empowerment, according to the WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2020.

Women’s involvement in politics:

  • Numerous local panchayat sarpanches and health officials, like Daljit Kaur of Roorkee, Ritu Jaiswal of Singhwahini, and Kantika Sejuwal, mayor of the Chandannath municipality in Nepal, have been lauded for their incredibly efficient efforts.
  • Many articles have already been written about how well women leaders around the world have handled the pandemic, including Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, Tsai-Ing Wen of Taiwan, Sanna Marin of Finland, and KK Shailaja of Kerala.
  • Up until recently, South Asia had the most female heads of state of any continent, including Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Indira Gandhi, Khaleda Zia, Sheikh Hasina, and Benazir Bhutto.

Reasons for women’s poor political participation include:

  • Ironically, prejudice towards true equality persists among both men and women. It is generally accepted that male politicians have more guts than female legislators to carry out their campaign platform.
  • According to the UNDP Gender Social Norms Index, over half of the world’s population believes that men make better political leaders.
  • Family support is a significant element in the decision of women to seek careers in politics. In India, female candidates who have political experience are more likely to run for office.
  • Women find it more difficult to enter the political arena due to the influence of money in politics.
  • There are 10 female presidents of state out of a possible 193, and women hold 24 percent of parliamentary seats globally. This demonstrates how few women are represented in politics.
  • In the current unfavourable political climate, for instance, journalist Priya Ramani recently accused Union Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar of sexual harassment.
  • Political leaders run for office under their wives’ names on the reserved seats at the local level, but after they win elections, it is their male counterparts who exercise actual authority. Sarpanch pati raj/pati panchayat phenomena concept.

More female representation is required:

  • In India, female lawmakers improve economic performance in their districts by around 1.8 percentage points more annually than male lawmakers.
  • This suggests that the growth premium associated with female legislators is roughly 25% when average growth is 7%.
  • Lower Criminalization of Politics: Male lawmakers are nearly three times more likely than female legislators to have active criminal investigations when they run for office. This explains the above-mentioned growth disparity.
  • Better representation of women’s and children’s interests in the formulation of policies. Institutions like the Panchayat Raj make a compelling case for this.
  • Less Corruption: Women accumulate assets while in government at a pace that is 10% lower each year than that of men. These results are consistent with experimental data showing that women are more moral and risk-averse than men and are less likely to engage in criminal activity or other risky activities.
  • Economic expansion: It was discovered that politicians of both sexes are equally likely to negotiate federal projects for local road construction. Women are more likely than males to supervise these projects’ execution, nevertheless.
  • For instance, seats with a majority of women have a 22 percentage point lower share of unfinished road construction.
  • From a feminist perspective, politics must take a path that extricates women from their historical social and political marginalisation.
  • Despite having so many advantages, just 14% of women serve in the Lok Sabha and 11% in the Rajya Sabha.

Actions required:

  • There should be a drive for reservations for women in political parties in India, spearheaded by the Election Commission.
  • A measure proposing a 33% female quota in Parliament has not yet been passed in India. The PRI and ULB levels of this experiment have had great success.
  • Their political knowledge can be improved through political mentoring and skill development, making them more likely to run for office and lead the country towards growth.
  • Women are encouraged to enter politics through awareness, education, and role modelling, which dispels gender prejudices that view women as underrepresented in politics.
  • Inclusive political institutions are important for inclusive economic institutions and growth, which are both dependent on and necessary for social empowerment.
  • Women’s leadership and communication abilities must be improved, especially in rural areas, through raising female literacy rates. To overcome socio-cultural hurdles and raise their social standing, they need be given more influence.

Conclusion:

  • Political power is the cornerstone to all social progress, according to B.R. Ambedkar. Policymakers believe that ensuring women have proportional representation in parliament will solve all of the problems related to women’s empowerment. In order to enhance women’s organisations and create a progressive society where all citizens have equal access to opportunities, it is essential to acknowledge the importance of the roles played by women in the decision-making processes in society. Male politicians must take the initiative in opposing social norms that encourage inequality and vehemently denounce the words that their female counterparts use to disparage women.

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