The helplessness of 'self-help groups'

 This proposition fails to take into account the fact that the Credit-Deposit ratio of almost all rural banks in the country is between 10 and 25 per cent. This means that the rural areas are flush with money.

 Of course, this money would be concentrated in the hands of the richer sections; nevertheless it is floating around in the village. These rural rich are deploying this money at abysmally low rates of interest of 5 to 7 per cent in fixed deposits instead of deploying it in income generating activities.

 The youth among the richer families are also unemployed. They could just as well undertake activities like setting up a kirana or a tea shop, producing mushrooms or vegetables like water melons, dairying, or setting up fisheries, poultry or mini rice mills and so on.

 The central question is, why do the rural rich not invest in these activities? The obvious answer is that the rates of return are low so they prefer to deposit their money in time deposits rather than in income generating activities.

 The market-oriented economic policies followed by our governments have put these tiny industries at a disadvantage vis-