Mahila Rojgar Yojana: Bihar Govt to provide money to women for starting business

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on September 7 launched a new scheme called Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana under which the state government will provide financial support to women to start business.

The new scheme is seen as a potentially game-changing move to woo women voters in the upcoming assembly elections.

Under this new scheme women will be provided with Rs 10,000 as the first installment of financial support via Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to start her chosen employment activity.

Nitish Kumar announced that after regular assessment, these women will be given an additional Rs 2 lakh support for their business idea.

The state cabinet has already approved the plan, and officials said the first instalment would reach the women – one woman from each interested family – to start an enterprise of their choice this month itself and after that Rs 2 lakh more would be given after assessment of their business model.

The Janata Dal-United (JDU) leaders termed the scheme as an extension of programmes for women’s empowerment to make them financially independent through entrepreneurship.

Reaching out to Women Voters

The chief minister, flanked by deputy chief ministers Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Singh and parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, launched the portal for filling application online and flagged off 250 publicity vehicles to take the message to every nook and corner of the state so that all eligible women could avail the benefit of the scheme.

For women in rural areas, who may have difficulty in applying online for the scheme, offline applications would also be accepted. The main objective of the scheme, said JDU minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, is to boost the state’s rural economy for self-reliance through large-scale participation of women in income-generating activities.

While Nitish Kumar is seen as the main beneficiary of women’s votes due to a slew of affirmative actions for them, all the parties have this time promised different schemes to woo women as they have consistently outnumbered men in vote count over the last couple of decades.

Opposition parties’ promise

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav has promised ‘Mai-Bahin Samman Yojana’ within a month of the formation of his government, under which women will get ₹2,500 per month, on the lines of similar schemes that brought rich dividends in many states. The party has also started circulating forms for women to fill up, drawing attack from JDU minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, who described it “unethical”.

The Congress launched ‘Mahila ki Baat, Congress ke Saath’ campaign with a promise to include women’s needs in its election manifesto and ₹2,500 per month for them. Bihar Congress president Rajesh Ram said that Nitish Kumar was aping the Opposition’s schemes to hoodwink the masses, saying that if he wanted, he could have implemented them any day in the last 20 years.

The Jan Suraj Party has announced that it would give 40 of the 243 seats it would contest to women and loan to women at 4% for livelihood and entrepreneurship. A senior party functionary said that it would also come up with a financial scheme in the days to come.

Choudhary, however, said that the Opposition parties had a problem of seeing everything from the prism of election, as they could not insightfully assess the empowerment initiatives of the Nitish government for women over the years.

“It is an extension of women’s empowerment initiatives and now the stage has come to make them self-reliant not through freebies, but by actually assisting them to move one step further to become successful entrepreneurs. Many of them would also become job providers. Jeevika has proved the enormous ability of Bihar women. The difference between others and Nitish Kumar is that while others believe in promising, the CM implements on the ground,” he added.

In April, Kumar had launched the Mahila Samvad campaign to reach out to an estimated two-crore women beneficiaries of the government schemes and other stakeholders. The Mahila Samvad campaign vehicles apprised the women of the initiatives taken for them, viz. reservation of women in Panchayati Raj institutions, government jobs, economic empowerment of women through self-help groups, entrepreneurship schemes and promotion of Jeevika groups through livelihood programmes.