Twelve women. Fifty rupees a week each. In three years, our group had a corpus of ₹3.2 lakh, lending at 1% a month instead of the 5–10% the local moneylender charged. The math and the meeting rules.
Before our SHG began, borrowing ₹5,000 in an emergency meant repaying ₹8,000 over six months to the local moneylender. Nobody argued. Nobody had an alternative.
Under the NRLM framework, any twelve to twenty women can form a self-help group. Weekly savings, group bank account, internal lending. We started with ₹50 per member per week. That is ₹600 a week. It sounds small. Over three years, with disciplined saving and repayment, our corpus reached ₹3.2 lakh.
We lend to members at 1% per month, fixed. The moneylender charges 5–10%. Twelve women stopped borrowing from him within one year. Two started small tailoring businesses with SHG loans. All 12 now have individual bank accounts. Six have Aadhaar-linked insurance.
The single rule that keeps it working: no absences from the weekly meeting without prior information, and any missed contribution must be made up before the next lending decision. Sisterhood is built with rules, not sentiment.