Bhimthadi: roadmap to success

Experience in many countries demonstrates that poor women make investments wisely and earn returns (Human Resource Development, 1995). However, the flow of financial assistance to them has been too marginal, if at all, to enable them to cross the poverty line. The need to create a grassroots organizational base to enable women to come together, to analyze their issues and problems themselves, and to fulfill their needs were strongly advocated. In fact, experience shows that some of the successful ‘group-based participatory programmes’ have made significant improvement in the conditions of poor living women. SHG is one of the successful programs among these. Women in SHG come together and start their own small businesses. But marketing their product is a major problem for them. Hence Government has undertaken different kinds of activities for these women to market their products. The Indian Government and the state governments have taken some steps to encourage women to set up small businesses. For example the Karnataka State Government was offering help to widows to set up knitting businesses in 1997.

This study was undertaken with an objective to find out the problems of SHG in marketing their products, to study the benefits of Bhimthadi Jatra and to study the satisfaction of SHG with regards to Bhimthadi Jatra. For this study 100 SHGs were selected who have participated in Bhimthadi Jatra. A structured questionnaire was developed to collect the data and random sampling method was used to select the sample. Researcher has personally interviewed the respondents to collect valid and legitimate information.

Findings showed that most of the SHGs are not able to sell their product due to lack of market opportunities. Hence such type of exhibition would help them in building a strong market for their products.