Speaking to NDTV outside the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Smriti Irani revealed that an increasing number of women from lower social classes have applied for bank loans to launch their own enterprises.
Smriti Irani, the Union Minister, stated today that statistics on women have revealed an amazing tale of grassroots entrepreneurship. Speaking to NDTV outside the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, she revealed that an increasing proportion of women from lower social classes had applied for bank loans in order to launch their own enterprises.
She stated, using figures, that 400 million bank loans were made possible by Mudra. She told NDTV that since women made up 70% of the beneficiaries, “280 million loans were only for women.”
“It’s amazing,” she remarked, “that 280 million women apply for loans, while 230 million women open bank accounts thanks to Jan Dhan.”
“This might be easy for those who are at Davos, who are accustomed to engaging with financial institutions to get credit for their businesses in large volumes,” said Ms. Irani.
“But imagine a woman who has lived her entire life in a village, or who has lived in a slum, to create a business plan, go to a bank, convince the bank that her plan is functional, receive the credit, service the business need, and then service the loan, pay it back and then take repeated loan to grow her business,” said the minister in charge of the Women and Child Development department.
“The ecosystem of enterprise that stand-ups and start-ups have established is not the only place where revolution is occurring. At the grassroots level, the movement is exponential.
“The Self Help Groups, which employ 9 crore women, manage 37 million dollars’ worth of business annually,” the speaker stated, highlighting the fact that women serve as the “fulcrum for growth” when they are treated as equal participants in the process of growth, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done.
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