Maharashtra Rural Women's Enterprise Development Project

Maharashtra is the second-most populous state in India with over 112 million people. 17.4% of the population in Maharashtra live below the poverty line and all districts are to some extent food insecure. The states requires investment in order to address persisting rural poverty, vulnerability to climate shocks, and increasing rates of malnutrition.

The Nav Tejaswini project aims to enable one million poor rural households overcome poverty sustainably while improving rural women’s capacity to develop sustainable enterprises, engage in remunerative employment, and access markets.

The project will support all existing nano and microenterprise clusters, as well as developing new commodity clusters. Target beneficiaries are marginal farmers, livestock/fisheries micro-entrepreneurs, producers of non-farm products, workers in the service sector, and agricultural labourers.

This project builds on the success of the Tejaswini Rural Women's Empowerment Programme.