The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), under its EShakti initiative, has so far digitised around 1.29 lakh self-help groups (SHGs) covering 14.86 lakh individuals in the country.

The aim of the initiative is to digitise all SHGs under its Micro Credit and Innovations Department and reduce the drudgery of book keeping and cut the dependence on cash transactions.

“We have so far covered 14.86 lakh individual members across about 18,816 villages covering 22 districts in majority of the States. This year we plan to speed up the process to cover more SHGs,” MI Ganagi, Chief General Manager, Nabard, told BusinessLine .

“Since its launch as a pilot project at Ramgarh (Jharkhand) and Dhule (Maharashtra) in 2015, we have 174 banks participating, and 97 self-help promoting institutions (SHPIs) as partners. During the digitisation drive, about 14.55 lakh women were covered, around 11.96 lakh have been Aadhaar linked and 5.14 lakh members have mobile phones as per data collected,” he added.

Ganagi said the broader aim of the EShakti programme is to support the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna (PMJDY) by way of integrating SHG members with the financial inclusion agenda, improving the quality of interface between SHG members and banks for efficient and hassle-free delivery of banking services, and to facilitate convergence of delivery system with SHGs using Aadhaar-linked identity.

There are around 74 lakh SHGs in the country and Nabard is planning to complete the digitisation exercise in phases.

“Under phase II, 23 districts were taken up in 2016-17. Now, in this fiscal (2017-18), around 175 districts are planned to be included,” said AP Nanda, Deputy General Manager, Nabard.

The benefits

Digitisation eases transfer of social benefits and Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) through Aadhaar-linked accounts and convergence with other government benefits.

According to Ganagi, it would also facilitate SHG members access a wider range of financial services.

comment COMMENT NOW