Women’s Self-Help Groups and COVID-19 Pandemic: Resilience and Sustenance

Abstract

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has caused extreme threat and fatalities across the globe. India suffered enormously being the largest populous country after China. Towards controlling and mitigating measures for the coronavirus, Prime Minister of India declared lockdown in the month of March 2020. The lockdown led to huge loss of jobs and wages especially in rural areas among the marginalized communities and eventually resulted in worsening the status of poverty. During this pandemic, members of self-help groups under National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) faced multifaceted challenges and significantly contributed in supporting the various measures of government as well as the rural communities. This paper is a novel attempt to comprehend the various challenges faced and the measures taken for the sustenance and resilience of women’s self-help groups during the pandemic. This paper comprehensively reviews the extant literature on COVID-19 and self-help groups and concludes that women participating in self-help group scheme in rural sector of India have contributed immensely in supporting and taking care of the vulnerable deprived communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.