Virtual Guest lecture on the topic“Indebtedness Amongst members of women SHGs – Causes and Solutions”

Resource Person- Dr Basavaraju R Shrestha

Executive Director

Grassroots Research And Advocacy Movement (GRAAM)

Mysore

Date: 9^th July 2021- 12:30- 1:30 PM

The Virtual guest lecture on the topic “Indebtedness Amongst members of women SHGs – Causes and Solutions” was organized by the Department of Sociology on 9^th July 2021 in the college.

The Programme started at 12:30 pm by welcoming the guest by the final year student Philmon Dung Dung. Dr.Sowmya P head of the department introduced the resource person to all the participants.

Dr Basavaraju R Shrestha, Executive Director ,Grassroots Research And Advocacy Movement(GRAAM), Mysore was the guest speaker, expertise in designing and conducting large scale multidisciplinary research and evaluation studies. Second year BA student Ryanna Janet Jude was the moderator of the Programme.

Dr Basavaraju expressed his interest in interacting with the young minds and wished to share and grab the ideas of young minds to make the society better. The speaker began his presentation with a case study related to distress story of a SHG member who is trapped in the vicious circle of indebtedness and wants to end her life. He explained about the concept of development, poverty alleviation programs and poverty in the rural areas. He elucidated about the role and aim of SHGs in saving the money, internal lending in groups with a very low rate of interest , organize women and  empower them for a better standard of living.

Later the speaker stressed on the various reasons to take loans by the SHGs groups. Based on the field survey reports the speaker shared that majority of the women advance loans for unproductive purposes,  some of them take loan with a wrong notion that government may way of their loans and  not aware of the rate of interest been charged on their loans.  Due to all these reasons women are vulnerable to poverty and indebtedness.  The speaker stressed that women has to be educated in terms of saving habits and to face the challenging situations. The main solution Dr Basavaraju suggested was that Rural Employment Programme should be planned to complement the livelihood promotion. 

He concluded with a successful story of women who with the assistance of SHGs has established very well and leading a good life. During the interaction the students question were clarified by the resource person. The programme was concluded with the vote of thanks by the second year student Arpitha IM.