Muktidhara scheme for self-help groups in West Bengal

KOLKATA: Launching yet another initiative to support MSMEs, West Bengal government has come up with Project Muktidhra. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s brainchild Muktidhara is targeted at the overall development of self-help groups in the state.

The project was launched officially in Nadia district on Thursday at Krishnanagar by the State Consumer Affairs Minister Sadhan Pandey.

The Muktidhara project has been initiated to ensure steady earning, drive away poverty and bring about financial improvement through self help groups and self-employment schemes.

The scheme primarily targets to empower the financially backward classes, especially women and increase earnings of per family per month thereby working out more means of earning livelihood for these people. The project started off in the districts of Purulia and Paschim Medinipur and met with much success.

The self-help groups are being encouraged to produce lac, nuts, vegetables, create apiaries, make plates from sal leaves, produce puffed rice, and take up domestication and rearing of poultry, black Bengal goat, pigs and other dairy animals. The self-help groups registered under the scheme will be given training and in the initial phase of project Muktidhara, the self-help groups are being given a loan to the tune of Rs 1.25 lakhs.

The project will soon take off in all other districts of the state.