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Women empowerment have many forms: aborted reservation of seats
in central and state legislatures for women is just one form .
The fair sex have got the benefit of rotational reservation in
three-tier Panchayats and Nagar Panchayats in consequence of
73rd and 74th amendments of the constitution conceived by Rajiv
Gandhi as part of the process of political
empowerment. But
economic self-reliance for women is still a far cry even though
odd engineers and doctors among women continue to serve the
administration with no less distinction than their male
counterparts. Tripura has taken an important step forward
towards economic empowerment of woman by encouraging them to
launch self-help groups for making a living . Out of altogether
22 thousand operational self-help groups in Tripura as many as
nine thousand are run by women .
But this is the first time a all-women group have been given a
license to run a full-fledged ration shop in office-tilla area
under Bishalgarh subdivision of West Tripura. The license for
the ration shop with 426 registered cards was given away by SDO
(Bishalgarh) Ashudeb Das to Ms Roma Chkaraborty (45) , group
leader of the 'Godabari self-help' group in simple ceremony in
the SDO office yesterday. The simple programme in SDO office was
attended by Bishalgarh MLA Bhanulal Saha and chief of
Gautamnagar panchayat Dulal Saha. 'Our food inspector made a
detailed study of the ration profile in the area and submitted a
favourable report ; we then bifurcated the existing ration shop
here and allotted 426 cards to the new ration shop to be run by
all women' said Ashudeb Das . The group leader of the 'Godabari
self-help group' Roma Chakraborty who had attended the promme
with nine of her partners and associates said 'we will try to
run the ration shop as fairly as possible , it is a new
responsibility for us'.
Ms Roma Chakraborty and nine of her associates-all house-wives
in their late thirties or early forties like Shibani Saha (39)
and Mayarani Paul (37)- had launched the 'Godabari self-help
group in july 2006 . 'We had started work on various schemes
approved by the District Rural Development Association (DRDA)
like making spices , fruit juices ,hand-made garments etc but
last year we drew a loan of Rs 2 lakhs from Tripura Gramin Bank
(TGB) and started poultry farming' said Roma Chakraborty ,
leader of the group . However, outbreak of Bird Flu in West
Bengal early this year , escalating fears of the attack here and
finally the outbreak of the dreaded disease in Tripura dealt a
serious blow to the poultry farming. 'We have been barely
managing to pay our loan instalments for the past few months
with incomes from sale of spices, fruit juices etc and realising
that poultry farming would land us in deeper trouble we had
approached the subdivisional administration for help and they
have responded' said Roma . She added that from now on 'Godabari
self-help group' would only imporve its income and performance.
Tripura government's policy decision taken a few years back has
also helped to provide a fresh impetus to the growth and
development of self-help groups in Tripura. 'We had taken a
decision last year that while giving licenses for ration shops
self-help groups and co-operatives would be preferred and that
is why the license this time has gone to Godabari group' said
Jiten Chowdhry, minister for rural development , adding that
women are 'more honest than their male counteparts'.
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