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NEW DELHI: Soon, the last-mile connectivity in remote villages of the country's backward pockets may be provided by transport services run by women's Self Help Groups .

The Centre is working on a scheme to provide interest-free loan to women's SHGs to enable them to buy vehicles and hire drivers. These vehicles will serve as public transport to villages not connected to the main town by any such service. Besides a mode of commute, the idea behind the scheme is to ensure that farmers are able to carry their farm produce to markets for sale, source of their daily living. The plan flows from a study done by the rural development ministry in Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh.

Slated to be launched on the Independence Day, the scheme, to be part of the ongoing National Rural Livelihoods Mission , envisages interest-free loan to women's SHGs with the objective that they buy 6-8 vehicles to service an entire administrative block.

Plying transport in backward blocks would mark another avenue of self-employment for women, even if on an experimental basis.

Initial calculations based on the business likely to flow to these transports and the expenditure incurred on fuel and driver, shows that the service would be economically viable, a rural development ministry official said. The estimates, based on 6-7 trips to be undertaken by 10-12 seater vehicles in a day, show that the SHGs would have a positive balance after spending money on fuel and driver and repaying the principal amount on the loan to buy vehicles costing in the range of Rs 6.5-8.5 lakh. "It was not found viable with the going rate of 12% interest on loans. So, the idea of giving interest free loan," the official said.

For SHGs, it would mean a step forward. Women's groups form the core of the flagship self-employment programme of the rural development ministry - NRLM. With a timeline of 10 years, it seeks to cover seven crore rural poor households across 6,000 blocks through SHGs, with the objective that at least one woman from each identified household becomes a member.

Sources said the scheme, which is still to be named, will be launched in 250 backward blocks across states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, UP and Odisha among others.

