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 Computer Munshi
A ‘munshi ‘ with a difference
Introduction
With the mission of enhancing livelihoods on a large scale to empower poor people, PRADAN has been working in some of the very poor States of North India through decentralized projects for over 15 years. Identifying and organising poor women into SHGs, building their capabilities to enhance incomes, linking them to government’s poverty alleviation programmes, etc., are the broad strategies followed by 19 project teams, each operating in a district or a few blocks within or across districts.
Approach to SHG promotion
The approach that PRADAN has adopted requires that the groups become independent from PRADAN in a reasonable time frame so that the staffs is free for their core task of livelihoods promotion. The road map that PRADAN has prepared for the growth of an SHG deems that the group be free of any assistance from PRADAN, even for getting loans from banks, in about 1 ½ to 2 years. This requires that for routine maintenance functions such as accounts and MIS the group has to be on its own within the first three to five months.
Need for strong systems
If the SHGs have to be on their own for routine maintenance functions, it requires that they are equipped with strong, yet simple and user friendly systems, especially for accounts and MIS because they are the most important ongoing function in the SHG.
The Issue
The problem that most of the accountants face is in posting, consolidating and in preparing monthly statements. The accountants can do the basic data entry in the groups but the higher order functions attract a lot of mistakes.
Another major issue that PRADAN professional faces due to badly maintained group accounts is that the project MIS on the SHG is never up to date or complete. Updating office MIS is quite a labour intensive process that involves extensive group visits by the professional to collect data first hand. The group accountants are not able to prepare MIS statements for the group and even if they do the professionals do not have enough confidence in the statements that are prepared.
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