Emphasis was on strengthening women from rural areas of the State in economic and social terms by providing them with more and varied means of livelihood, as experts from all over the country congregated on Tuesday with their suggestions to achieve this goal.
The inaugural day of the two-day national-level consultation session on ‘Towards Gender Transformative Rural livelihoods: Strategies for Convergence’, jointly organised by Union Ministry of Rural Development and UN Women, saw ideas from Government and Non-Government bodies on how to modify existing welfare schemes so as to provide better livelihood opportunities to rural women.
“There is a need to assess possibilities of how we can make welfare schemes more sensitive towards women. To this end, MoRD is working towards ensuring more participation from women in economical activities. Projects which are meant to strengthen economical and social standing of rural families should focus more on women of these families,” stated Union Minister of State for Rural Development Sudarshan Bhagat.
He continued, “After observing the success self help groups (SHGs) has had with livelihood opportunities and women empowerment, we intend to use them in Dept’s poverty eradication initiatives. And in J’khand’s context, we can use the forest resources and animal and poultry rearing for the same.”
Highlighting MoRD’s commitment towards rural women, Bhagat added, “We are ensuring more involvement of women in most of our projects and increased income to them. This addition in earnings in turn, we believe, will help in strengthening the standard of living of the families too.”
Discrepancies in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, related to payment mostly, will be dealt with so that people tend to approach the schemes, especially women, stated State Rural Development Minister Neelkanth Singh Munda.
On awarding rural women legal claims to land, Rural Development Secretary to Government of India, JK Mohapatra stated, “Rural women’s right to land is extremely fundamental as 90 per cent work in agricultural sector. In absence of legal rights to land resources, these women agriculturist are not entitled to credit and insurance claims and have to bear the full brunt of losses. We need to review legislations related to land so that this situation can change.”
He added, “Over the years, labour force participation from women has gone down from 33 per cent to 25 per cent. There even have been instances where they were denied work. But we have to scale up the supplement programmes to provide more employment opportunities to women. MNREGA has to be made more efficient so that women get adequate work. It is time to provide actual livelihood opportunities to women, instead of certain scattered efforts in this direction.”