UN’s agricultural development agency packages $208 million loan for India

More than 1 million rural India women will benefit from a new $208 million ‘empowerment financing programme’, partly funded by the United Nations agricultural development agency, aimed at boosting access to microfinance, better livelihood opportunities, self-help groups and local governance.

The Tejaswini Rural Women’s Empowerment Programme is aimed at helping poor women in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Tejaswini means ‘a woman who is radiant’, an empowered woman, and was chosen by local participants.

The UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) provided a $39.5 million concessional loan for the eight-year programme, which was marked with a signing ceremony in Rome Thursday by IFAD’s President, Lennart Båge and India’s ambassador to UN agencies, Rajiv Dogra. The balance of the financing was mostly coming from Indian national and state development banks.

Although India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, growth has been uneven and as agriculture’s share of GDP has declined, many rural women still live in extreme poverty, the IFAD explained in a statement.

Another aim of the programme is to broaden the scope of women’s roles, beyond strictly domestic and agricultural support work. Rural areas are particularly resistant to change and the programme will provide legal training to deal with such women’s issues as child marriages, domestic violence and demands for dowry.

Reflecting the tremendous success of the self-help group movement in India more than 74,000 such groups will be involved in this programme and federations of self-help groups are expected to develop, the IFAD statement noted.

Besides filling in gaps women still experience in access to financing the programme will also help them improve cost-effective production through new technology and to reach larger, more distant markets.

This latest loan brings IFAD’s total investment in India to $500 million in 21 programmes and projects. IFAD is a UN specialized agency dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries through low-interest loans and grants.

There are currently 188 ongoing IFAD-supported rural poverty eradication programmes and projects in which IFAD has invested more than $2.9 billion, attracting co-financing from governments, beneficiaries, multilateral and bilateral donors and other partners for a total of $6.3billion.