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Karnataka’s Cooperation Department plans to roll out ‘Badavara Bandhu’ and ‘Kayakaka’ schemes to help the poor and strengthen self-help groups (SHGs) in the State.
‘Badavara Bandhu’ is a scheme to help street vendors and hawkers get easy capital to conduct business. ‘Kayakaka’ is exclusively for SHGs, said Karnataka Minister for Cooperation Bandeppa Kashempur.
“These schemes are aimed at freeing them from the clutches of private money-lenders,” he added.
Loans to vendors
The Cooperation Department is planning to launch the ‘Badavara Bandhu’ scheme on November 22. Street-vendors and hawkers will get collateral-free, zero per cent interest loans ranging from ₹2,000 to ₹10,000. “Street-vendors and hawkers, just like pigmy deposits, have flexibility in repaying the loan. It can be daily, monthly or quarterly depending on the nature of the business,” he said.
Loans to SHGs
According to Kashempur, 53,000 people will be covered in the first phase. Of these 5,000 vendors/hawkers will be in Bengaluru, 3,000 in other city corporation areas and around 1,000 hawkers in every district.
On the ‘Kayakaka’ scheme, the Minister said SHGs would get loans up to ₹10 lakh, of which ₹5 lakh would be zero interest and the balance at 4 per cent interest.
“This scheme is exclusively for SHGs, especially in the Malnad region. Here, many SHGs are cottage industries that need capital to expand their production,” he added.
To celebrate 65th Cooperation Week, the department plans to hold exhibitions, seminars and events in different parts of the State.
According to MK Aiyappa, Registrar of Cooperative Societies, workshops would be held on cooperative marketing, processing and storage, and organic and zero budget farming, value addition and brand building through co-operatives, building public private cooperative partnership, awareness of government schemes and income generation through cooperatives, and skill and technology upgradation through cooperatives.
Farm loan waiver
Talking about farm loan waiver in the cooperative sector, especially loans from cooperatives banks, Kashempur said the government is planning to issue ‘debt free’ certificates to farmers later this month or early next month.
“Currently about ₹1,050 crore benefiting 2.30 lakh farmers have been waived and the department is in the process of scrutinising applications received from July 10 to October end. Once data entry is complete, the entire 9,000 crore will be disbursed by January end. Farmers, who get ‘debt free’ certificate, are eligible to submit fresh loan applications post January. Not before that,” he added.
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