Paper short abstract:

Through lockdowns, reverse migration, and deaths, women of SHGs supported by a CSO in Central India led relief programs and received aid, debited years of savings in SHGs, leveraged loans and delved into active village governance. This work studies processes, relationships and role of women in it.

Paper long abstract:

The pandemic raged through India in two waves - bringing lives and livelihoods to a standstill and then a carnage. Both waves played out disparately in the lives of the marginalized Adivasi women in Madhya Pradesh, India. Across two districts, eleven Federations of Self Help Groups run by committees of local women, supported by a Civil Society Organisation, continued unabated microfinance services while also extending relief in varied forms to its members. When avenues for procuring ration or agricultural inputs and opportunities for wage labour were scarce, the Federations supplied everyday essentials and farm and off farm inputs to its members. This support was set on certain conditions though, each member’s participation within their groups. This study explores the nature of these microfinance institutions, its terms and conditions, its participants and their relationship to the SHGs through the COVID crisis. It analyzes the entanglements of CSO supported SHG members in private microfinance institutions and government aided groups during the pandemic and their role in each.

During the second wave and the subsequent failure of public healthcare systems led to concentrated efforts for strengthening rural governance through the network of SHGs, leading to an initiative termed Hissedari Sabhas, a platform created to discuss and engage on people’s rights and entitlements. This work then probes into these nascent institutions to ensure social security as institutes of the people, honed by CSOs and studies its complementarity to microfinance institutions and the labour of women in the process of empowerment - financially and socially.