‘Nearly 3 million women farmers set up agri-nutrition gardens in their backyards in two years’
Under the National Rural Livelihood Mission, 5.1 million women farmers have been covered under agro-ecological practices and 16.8 million women mobilised into more than 1.58 million SHGs, informs the Ministry of Rural Development.
Women in Odisha preparing new gardens to make nutri gardens. Photo: By arrangement
Ensuring the availability of nutrition at household level, 2,995,000 women farmers across the country have established agri-nutrition gardens in their backyards in the past two years.
This was announced on June 17 by the National Rural Livelihood Mission, an initiative of the Ministry of Rural Development that aims at enabling rural poor to increase household income through sustainable livelihood enhancements and improved access to financial services.
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Highlighting its achievement between 2019-2021 (as on May 21, 2021), the ministry announced that 5.1 million women farmers have been covered under agro-ecological practices. Around 16.8 million women across the country have been mobilised into more than 1.58 million self help groups (SHGs).
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The mission aims at providing sustainable livelihood opportunities to rural self help group women thereby giving them a better social status and role in decision-making.
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In the span of two years, bank credits of Rs 1,530 billion were disbursed to self help groups. Under the Startup Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP), 104,000 enterprises have been set up. The programme focuses on supporting rural poor setup enterprises and provide support till the enterprises stabilise.
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Meanwhile, as part of the COVID response, 51 million self help group members were trained in 324,000 villages on COVID preparation. Together, the self help group members produced 225.4 million masks, 480,000 litres of sanitisers, 102,000 litres of hand wash.
Besides, bank sakhis have provided financial services amounting to Rs 62,776 million to 22 million beneficiaries between April 2020 and March 2021, as per the Union ministry.