Sonchiraiya

Syllabus– General Studies 3(economy) 

Context

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs recently launched ‘SonChiraiya’ (A brand and logo).

What is SonChiraiya?

• It is for the marketing of urban Self-Help Group (SHG) products.
• It will help women to become financially empowered and live dignified life.
• This initiative will certainly prove as a step towards increased visibility and global access for the products made by urban SHG women. 
• The Ministry expects to link many more such SHG members, with a variety of professionally packaged, hand-crafted ethnic products, reaching the doorsteps of the customers globally.
• The DAY-NULM under the aegis of MoHUA has focussed on equipping the urban poor women with adequate skills and opportunities and enabling them to promote sustainable micro-enterprises. 
  • It mobilises women from urban poor households into SHGs and their federations to create a support system for these women. 
  • Over 5.7 lakh SHGs have been formed across various States/ UTs with almost 60 lakh members. 
  • Many of these SHGs are engaged in livelihood activities, producing goods such as handicrafts, textiles, toys, eatables and so on. 
  • These were being sold primarily in local neighbourhood markets and often faced barriers in achieving visibility and wide market access. 
  • To overcome these challenges, the Ministry entered into a Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) with leading e-Commerce Portals viz. Amazon and Flipkart, with an underlying narrative of women empowerment.
• Achievements:
  • Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this partnership has successfully onboarded on the e-Commerce Portal over 2,000 products of nearly 5,000 SHG members across 25 States/ UTs. 
  • Innovative methods of online training for SHGs have been ensured to enable them to smoothly operate on e-portals. 
  • Live demonstrations for account registration, pricing, packaging, re-branding and so on were also organized in collaboration with the e-portals and State Urban Livelihoods Missions.

Question- How Self help groups in urban areas can help in ensuring women participation in the labour force? Analyze.

PIB Link- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1745459