Nabard has launched a project — “Eshakti” — for digitisation of all SHGs (Self Help Groups) in the country.

The bank has, in the pilot phase, taken up two districts – Dhule in Maharashtra and Ramgarh in Jharkhand for digitisation of SHG data.

R Amalorpavanathan, Deputy Managing Director, Nabard, told BusinessLine the project, which was initiated in April, is nearing completion.

“We will have collated the data of around 6,000 groups in these two districts alone. The database has been created; individual data linking their Aadhar and mobile number have been mapped. Banks are being given viewing rights of the activities of each of the groups. This will help banks to view the group activities and sanction loans from the comfort of the branch itself,” he said.

Expansions plans Nabard is now planning to escalate the pilot phase to cover 10 districts (one each in TN, Karnataka, Gujarat, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Assam) before the close of this fiscal.

“After the first round of pilot, we will be able to sort out the technical issues,” the Nabard DMD said. According to him, there are around 74 lakh SHGs in the country.

“Though SHGs per se appear to be organised, they are largely unorganised when it comes to specifics. There are issues of multiple financing, inadequacies in account keeping and so on.”

To tackle such issues, Eshakti has been mooted in sync with Prime Minister’s Digital India Initiative, he said, and explained that volunteers trained by the Application Service Providers (ASPs) capture the data of the SHG and its members and upload the same in a web-based server. Nabard has given a tablet PC for the volunteer group. It is loaded with cloud-based apps, delivered front-end in regional languages. Nabard has estimated the investment for extension of this exercise at ₹1,200 crore.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW