Micro-Loans  

As part of Save Indian Farmers’ ongoing efforts, we help the wives/widows of the farmers to repay their loans or expand their businesses by providing them financial help. These are the widows or families who earn too low income to be able to repay their loans or even earn their living sometimes. Your support has helped us realize the dreams of many farmer families and also give them an opportunity to change their lives.

With Manaswini Mahila Nagari Patpedhi, a women’s co-operative credit society, SIF provides an easy and low interest credit to women to start small scale income generating activities. The idea behind this activity is to achieve economic empowerment of women. The amount is that to be given to the beneficiary will be refunded without interest in one year and re routed to other needy women in sustainable manner. Only the training cost will not be refunded. One income generation activity will be take place in one village. The same activity will not be repeated in same village.

We provided micro-loans to 10 beneficiaries in Ambejogai Maharashtra and 9 among them have already started their businesses. Despite the initial setbacks due to COVID 19, we were successfully able to complete the funds transfer. As per expectations, the selected enterprises are self sustainable and some of the beneficences has started to repay. 

Our field partner in the region did get to meet a number of our borrowers who stepped away from their many duties to spend some time with us.

One of our beneficiaries, Rachana Kasture, told our team that she is very happy with the help that we provided as she is now able to save ₹ 100-120 daily, after all her expenses and is able to sustain better. 

The Swabhimaan Mitra teaches the community members about how to go about taking a loan. He makes the community understand that a loan does not just provide them with much needed cash flows but it is also a liability, something that they have to pay back.  He therefore, explains that the loan should be made use of in such a way that the borrowers should be able to repay it along with a growth in their business.

Kavitha, a Swabhimaan member, explains her understanding of the training session. Being a farmer and having an animal husbandry unit herself, she says that she understands the implications of borrowing. She says it would require her 30,000 Rs to purchase a cow, and in order to reduce her liability, it becomes important that she first needs to check her affordability. She should first consider how much she can afford to contribute from her savings before taking a loan on the remaining amount. This way, her liability would be reduced. Kavitha also says that the financial literacy session has helped her understand that we should learn to control our expenses and start the habit of saving. The expense should be less than income. 

Previous Years’ Efforts

In the previous years we have worked with our partner Rang De, to help widows with micro-loans. With help from our partners, Sarvodaya Youth Organisation and  Rang De, we could support 20 families across 7 states, through micro-financing.

One of the widows, Kola Rajni, from Geesugonda village of Telangana’s Warangal district, shared her story with us. With a little earning of Rs. 150 a day (4500/month), she could only save a little to open a grocery store. With the Micro-finance special category loan, she could buy provisions for her store. She could upgrade the store with steady income and now has an earning of about Rs. 11500 per month. Please read her story in detail here

Here is the list of the women that we helped through Micro-Financing in the previous years.