From Self-Help to Self-Reliance: Rethinking Rural Transformation : CSR Box and One Purpos India Forum, Delhi 2026
Self-help groups are often spoken of as one of the biggest success stories of rural India and the description is well-deserved. Deendatyal Antyoday Yojana, National Rural Livelihoods Mission, DAY-NRLM's proactive programme for women empowerment has enabled coming together of over ten crore rural women into about 90.9 lakh SHGs. Of these almost two crores have become Lakhpati Didis. After three decades in public administration, including leading the Maharashtra State Rural Livelihoods Mission (Umed) and MAVIM in Maharashtra, I have seen the efforts and transformation of these groups closely. I have also seen and understood where they falter.
CSR box recently organised the One Purpos India Forum in New Delhi wherein I was a part of a panel discussion titled "From Self-Help to Self-Reliance: SHGs, FPOs and Rural Transformation".
I have spent almost a decade studying the subject and am now working on it through the Anirvedshakti Foundation. Women have proven their organisational skills. What remains unsettled is whether the market will let them in, on what terms, and which women will get through the door.
For decades, rural development was designed around the idea of a beneficiary, a person who receives a loan, a subsidy, a training certificate or a kit. That model benefitted individuals but Day NRLM's capacity building programme shaped community initiatives which made possible the overall development of the woman, her family and the community.
Rural transformation required a different starting point. The woman, the farmer and the community institution became decision-makers and began to decide what the enterprise does, how surplus is shared, who is hired and when to expand.
The first generation of SHGs was built on thrift and credit and that was the right foundation. Regular savings, internal lending, prompt repayment, maintaining accounts gave poor women financial discipline and more importantly, a seat at a table and recognition from banks. But a group that only saves and lends has a ceiling.
The next step was to treat the group as a platform for enterprise. Members can run individual ventures, form collective units for processing or retail or work as service providers and aggregators. Production is seldom the real difficulty. A group can make excellent millet products, pickles or garments and still earn little, because the product never reaches a paying customer at a fair price. The social barriers behind the market gap still exist.
When we discuss market linkage, we usually discuss packaging, logistics and price. These matter, but the deeper obstacles are social. Only about 38 per cent of rural women aged 15 and above were in the labour force in 2025, according to the PLFS monthly bulletin, and much of that work is unpaid or poorly paid. Women also operate only around 14 per cent of agricultural holdings, according to the 2015-16 Agriculture Census, which means little land, little collateral and little access to working capital.
Mobility of a woman is also restricted, so a woman who can produce at home often cannot sell outside it. Her time is consumed by household work and care that is not shared. Transport, wholesale buying and stall allotment are frequently controlled by men and the intermediary keeps most of the margin. Her earnings are treated as supplementary income, so the family hesitates to invest in her business. Buyers often purchase SHG products out of sympathy rather than as a consumer choice, which does not build repeat sales. In some places caste hierarchies also decide who may sell what and to whom. A value chain does not exclude these women by rule. It excludes them through who owns the assets, who holds the contacts and who controls the vehicle.
Farmer Producer Organisations, FPOs answer a problem that individual SHGs cannot solve alone by giving it scale. A single small producer can only be a price-taker. A collective that aggregates, grades, processes and sells in volume can negotiate and can also afford technology and storage that a individual member cannot.
The promise depends on governance and business capacity, not on registration. At times FPOs exist on paper, with a board that does not meet, with no working capital, helping nobody. SHGs and FPOs are best seen as complementary : SHGs build the social and financial base among women and FPOs add commercial scale in agriculture and allied sectors. A rural value chain works only when producers are connected to finance, infrastructure, technology and demand at the same time. That means collateral-free working capital through bank linkage and revolving funds, shared processing and storage facilities, and assured demand through government procurement, institutional buyers and urban channels. It also means digital and financial skills for women themselves.
The same chain must be designed to reach the most marginalised. The widow, the deserted woman, the landless Dalit or Adivasi woman and the woman with a disability are usually the last to join a group and the first to be edged out by better-off members. Inclusion has to be built in deliberately by identifying them through Antyodaya scheme, SECC data and community resource persons and giving them entry-level roles as collectors, graders or packers, and create a path upward.
We should also measure honestly, disaggregating our data by caste, widowhood, disability and income and verifying whether the poorest are moving up or being crowded out.
CSR has become a major source of support for rural livelihoods and it can be a powerful catalyst. But a standalone project with a fixed term rarely leaves behind an institution that can stand on its own.
The more durable approach is to treat CSR as seed capital for institutions rather than as a substitute for them. Funders and implementers could invest in leadership, governance, bookkeeping and business skills, and could facilitate planning from the beginning for the day when the support tapers off. That is also where credible impact measurement and clean compliance matter. Organisations that can show clear outcomes, transparent accounts and a fundable project design will find it easier to attract patient capital, whether from corporates, government schemes or newer instruments such as the Social Stock Exchange and volunteering. Partnerships between corporates, government and community institutions can then move from isolated pilots to programmes that are scalable and lasting.
The larger aim is not to add another livelihood activity to a village. It is to build a local economy in which production, processing, trade and services support one another and where employment and income stay within the community. When a woman earns and decides, the benefits spread to her children’s schooling and her family’s nutrition.
This is why I believe that self-help must lead to self-reliance. Self-help is the start, the point at which people organise themselves. Self-reliance is the destination, where their institutions, enterprises and markets are strong enough to carry on without being held up. We will get there if we begin small, test honestly, measure who actually benefits and keep the most vulnerable in view from the first day.
Inclusion is not charity. It is good economics, and it is justice, because a rural economy that leaves out its poorest cannot be considered "inclusive".
The future of rural transformation lies in moving from subsidies to sustainability, from training to trading and from beneficiaries to entrepreneurs.
Rural women have already demonstrated their courage, capability and enterprise. What they need is not sympathy, but opportunity; not temporary support, but lasting access to markets.
Self-help brought women together. Self-reliance must empower them to lead. True transformation will happen when women are not just part of the economy, but help shape its future completely.
R. Vimala, IAS Retired, MH 2009
Subject Matter Expert, CBC & YASHADA
Former Resident Commissioner, Maharashtra Sadan & Secretary, GoM,
Founder AnirvedShakti Foundation,
PhD Scholar at IIT Bombay
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