Village Cooperatives and Self Help Groups in fostering Rural Development across West Bengal, India: a critical insight into their role in Participatory Local Governance

The study critically examines how village co-operatives and Self-Help Groups (SHGs) foster rural development, in terms of women empowerment, livelihood etc.; and their pivot towards government assisted programmes in the light of the existing policy framework. Evidence from across India shows that the cooperatives and the SHGs are powerful stakeholders at the core of the government policy for financial inclusion, entrepreneurial promotions and poverty reduction, easy access to the line of credit, etc., facilitating sectors like agriculture, dairy, handicrafts, and other industries. The women members of the SHGs have enhanced their agency through robust decision making power, self confidence, and mobility, building their own social capital. Through trust building and mutual support in terms of community participation in local governance and local ownership of developmental processes, the members of the cooperatives and SHGs have ventured into the democratization of the governance structure.Despite of evidences showing positive impacts of cooperative and SHG model, challenges remains regarding the lack of long term sustainability, adaptation in changing socio-cultural and political environment, lack of managerial skills in terms of governance operations, financial illiteracy, uneven access to market and capital, lack of adequate infrastructure, overt dependence of state led schemes and exclusion of the poorest and most vulnerable from the field of local governance.Thus, the following study calls for capacity building initiatives for the SHGs and Cooperatives for their better outreach towards the government and non-government policy framework, integration into global value chains, and supportive microfinance-cooperatives-SHG linkages. It concludes that the village cooperatives and SHGs are key institutional framework involved in the due processes, targeting inclusive and sustainable rural development, whereas their transformative potential have become dependent on context-specific designs and long term support mechanisms deliberated towards negating the challenges in governance, market, and equity.