May I extend to you all my sincere greetings and good wishes on the occasion of Republic Day. This is a day for introspection. We have enjoyed ‘swarajya’ for long. It is high time now to convert ‘swarajya’ to ‘su-rajya’. And that is exactly what Gujarat is doing...and continuing to improvise upon its own record of good governance...by reaching out to and empowering the poor and marginalized...and ensuring equity with growth.
Incidentally today is also the day when the captains of the world industry, business, finance and intelligentsia are getting together in Davos for the annual World Economic Forum summit scheduled from 26th to 30th of this month. India too is sending a high level delegation led by a group of senior Ministers of the Union Cabinet. Interestingly India has chosen the theme 'INDIA INCLUSIVE' for projecting the country in this year’s summit in Davos. And that leaves me once again amazed at how Gujarat surges ahead and puts thoughts to action, even while Delhi keeps thinking and talking.
During the Vibrant Gujarat summit in 2009 I had said that Gujarat would no longer limit itself to leveraging the platform of Vibrant Gujarat summits for mobilising investment offers for its own benefit. We would move on from Gujarat-centric approach to Gujarat-enabled approach. I had mentioned that while Davos provides a platform for intellectual deliberations on the world economy, Vibrant Gujarat Summit 2011 would give a new direction to the country’s investment landscape. We could indeed achieve this lofty objective in many ways during the recently concluded Vibrant Gujarat 2011 summit. But one of such path-breaking achievements I would like to mention today, and aptly so on the occasion of Republic Day, is that of ensuring inclusive development and empowering the poor and the women in rural areas through MISSION MANGALAM.
MISSION MANGALAM was launched in 2010 on the occasion of Golden Jubilee Year of the state of Gujarat to channelize the efforts and resources of the state for ensuring inclusive development and thereby improving the HDI of the state. The objective of Mission Mangalam is to mobilise the poor into collectives like Self Help Groups, Producer Groups, Co-operatives etc., nurture skills in them, assist them with microfinance and eventually empower them through sustainable livelihoods. What was innovative in Gujarat’s approach was that all this was envisaged to be done through strategic Public-Private-Partnerships involving the corporate sector, banks, professional institutions and the collectives of the poor, apart from the State Government. And to facilitate this convergence, a company was formed by the name Gujarat Livelihood Promotion Company (GLPC). As a result of this mission-approach, today we have more than 25 lakh women in rural areas from poor families, organized into 200,000 Self Help Groups / Sakhi Mandals.
During the Vibrant Gujarat 2011, State Government explored potential to involve some of the largest corporate houses in the country, with projects involving the SHGs by integrating them in the corporate value chain. The idea was to create synergies and thereby a win-win proposition for all the stakeholders. As a result, we could achieve MoUs with some of the biggest industrial / business groups in the country to initiate projects involving the collectives of the poor and promising livelihoods to about 1.5 million people in the next 3 – 5 years!!! Together the financiers and investors have committed more than Rs. 21,000 Crores to enable this. Sectors like agriculture, agro-processing, food-processing, apparels and garments, handlooms, handicrafts and rural transportation have been the focus areas for livelihood activities. What is also heartening to note here is that some of these projects have focussed on the poorest communities of the State like salt-workers ('agariyas'), fishermen ('sagar-khedus') and tribals.
While the rest of the country is grappling with issues like unemployment and under-employment, Gujarat through Mission Mangalam has shown a way as to how the collective strength of the government and the private sector can be channelized for mutually beneficial objectives. Through this initiative the corporate-partners stand to gain since they do profitable backward and forward linkages with existing business processes. SHGs and entrepreneurs in the rural areas stand to gain substantially since livelihood opportunities are locally created without any out-migration for jobs. Proper linkages and synergies make this initiative a fool-proof and effective intervention.
While Central Government is grappling with knee-jerk reactions to critical issues like farmer’s suicides, rural debt-trap and regulation of exploitative MFIs, Mission Mangalam redressed this issue systematically and effectively during the Vibrant Gujarat 2011 summit. State Government entered into MoUs with Banks to ensure that all the SHGs of the State shall be linked with a minimum microfinance of Rs. 50,000 /-. This will bring liquidity of more than Rs. 1,000 Crores to 200,000 SHGs/Sakhi Mandals within the next 3- 4 months, thereby directly helping 25 lakh members, and impacting more than 1 crore population!!! Since this microfinance comes as Cash Credit facility, the SHGs would be empowered to use it even for social expenses, contingency expenses and above all for swapping of costlier loans from money-lenders. Since this money can be rotated as many number of times, the effective outcome of a linkage of Rs. 1,000 Crores could even be as high as Rs. 5,000 Crores within one year. This potential makes the Mission Mangalam initiative the largest government-driven microfinance intervention in India.
Once again while the omniscient and omnipotent intellectuals of Delhi were thinking and talking their way to Davos, Gujarat had already acted...acted decisively and effectively. No wonder many chose to call Vibrant Gujarat summit - "Davos in Action".
Jay Jay Garvi Gujarat !
Yours,
