Bihar has given its rural women’s self-help groups (SHGs) a dedicated, lower-cost line of credit by launching the Bihar Rajya Jeevika Nidhi Saakh Sahkari Sangh Limited—a statewide cooperative that will lend through the SHG federation network. At the launch on September 2, 2025, the Prime Minister transferred ₹105 crore into the institution’s account to operationalise lending. The Centre and the state will co-fund the cooperative and route money digitally, with no paper applications.
While the inaugural transfer gets the wheels turning, reporting by national dailies indicates a larger sanctioned corpus of about ₹1,000 crore, signalling that the Nidhi is meant to be more than a token fund. The political leadership also framed the launch squarely around women’s enterprise, describing it as “auspicious” for pushing rural entrepreneurship at scale.
Who stands to benefit? Bihar’s SHG ecosystem—popularly known as JEEViKA—is among India’s largest. By early 2025 the state counted ~10.6 lakh SHGs linked to ~1.35 crore families, and the most recent annual report logged 10.58 lakh SHGs mobilised statewide. Creating a cooperative lender that plugs directly into this network gives the state a ready-made last-mile to find, underwrite and support borrowers in nearly every block.
What’s different about this cooperative? Two design choices stand out in official notes. First, all registered Cluster-Level Federations (CLFs) become members of the cooperative, so credit delivery and recovery run through institutions that SHGs already trust. Second, the entire workflow is digital, with 12,000 community cadres equipped with tablets to handle enrolment and transactions in villages. That reduces friction and the time women typically spend travelling to bank branches.
Why it matters now: Bihar’s SHG entrepreneurs often rely on microfinance institutions (MFIs) that commonly charge 18–24% interest, which can choke growth and keep firms small. Government briefings describe Jeevika Nidhi as an “alternative financial system” designed to reduce dependence on MFIs by offering larger loan sizes at lower rates, delivered faster and with clearer accountability. The exact product slate and rate card will be notified by the cooperative; the policy intent is to push affordable, timely capital to viable tiny enterprises.
How funds will flow: Because the cooperative sits on top of JEEViKA’s three-tier structure (SHG → Village Organisation → CLF), it can channel pooled funds into last-mile lending while using the same peer-monitoring and federated governance that made SHGs work in the first place. That architecture is consistent with the World Bank-supported evolution of JEEViKA, which emphasises community institutions as the backbone of livelihoods finance and services.
The road ahead—signals to watch:
- Rate & product notification: Look for circulars detailing interest rates, ticket sizes and tenure for working-capital and equipment loans. Lower rates versus MFI benchmarks will be the litmus test of “cheap credit.”
- On-ground digitisation: How quickly the 12,000 tablet-equipped cadres are deployed and trained will determine whether onboarding and disbursal times actually shrink.
- Scale-up of the corpus: Media have flagged a ₹1,000 crore sanction; budget and cooperative disclosures will show how fast that scales beyond the ₹105 crore seed.
- Convergence with other schemes: The state’s new women-enterprise grants and broader SHG initiatives can provide grant-plus-credit ladders if guidelines are aligned—vital for first-time borrowers to avoid a “capital cliff.”
With a statewide cooperative, a digital rails approach, and federation-led delivery, Bihar is attempting to swap high-cost, externally driven borrowing for community-controlled, cheaper credit at scale. If the cooperative moves quickly on its product and rate announcements and keeps the pipeline transparent, millions of SHG women could gain a steadier footing to grow their micro-businesses this year.
