Project Shakti – A Public Private Partnership for Rural Consumers’ Welfare
Keywords:
social business initiatives, women empowerment, Consumer confidence, feminine consciousnessAbstract
The consumer movement has been started in India in the year 1930 by a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. And the enactment of the Consumer Protection Act in 1986 had provided the momentum for the consumer movement in India to bloom which explicitly called for the protection of consumers from rural India who earn an insufficient living. And with this set of mind in the early 1980s, the Government of India launched the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) programme under the Integrated Rural Development Programme. In the year 2001, it has made a tie up with the MNC giant HUL with the objective of changing lives and boosting incomes in rural Bharat. It has involved in Project Shakti of HUL which is conceived with twin objectives, to empower women in remote rural areas and to enable HUL to reach inaccessible areas and thus to land a win-win situation. It seeks to empower underprivileged women of villages and thus give the ultimatum to consumers’ welfare. The objective of this paper will be to throw a light on various aspects of Project Shakti and to relate the initiatives with the rural consumers’ welfare, both in qualitative and quantitative terms.
References
Clinton, B., Dan, G., Mark, K. & Paradis, Z. J. (2006), “Hindustan Lever & The New India: Enabling farmers and connecting with customers”, Strategic Planning Workshop, Spring 2006, Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology.
Day, G. S. (1994), “The capabilities of market-driven organizations”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 58, issue 4, pp. 37-52.
Thuy, H. P. (2008), “Unilever in India: Hindustan Lever’s Project Shakti”, thuyha-management.blogspot (2010), http://thuyha-management.blogspot.com, accessed on 10.12.2010.
Kamath, V. (2003), “Where HLL's Shakti comes from”, The Hindu Business Line
(Internet Edition), Thursday, May 29, 2003.
Kotler, P. (1999), “Kotler on marketing: How to create, win, and dominate markets”. The Free Press.
Narver, J.C. and Slater, S.F. (1990), “The Effect of a Market Orientation on Business Profitability”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 54, issue 4, pp. 20-35.
Raj, S. J. M. & Selvaraj, P. (2007), “Social Changes and the Growth of Indian Rural
Market: An Invitation To FMCG Sector”, International Marketing Conference on Marketing & Society, 8-10 April, 2007, IIMK. (accessed on 02.08.07)
Tamlurkar, D. V. (2008), “Assessing the Marketing for Rural India”, indianmba (2010) http://www.indianmba.com, accessed on 10.12. 2010
Xavier, M. J. (2003), “Technology to the grassroots”, The Hindu Business Line (Internet Edition), Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications, accessed on Thursday, Jan 30, 2003.
Gupta, I. & Rajshekhar, M. (2005), “ITC vs HLL”, Business World, April 25, 2005, http://www.itcportal.com, accessed on 10.12. 2010
