The Nudge Institute today announced the graduation of 625 households from 41 villages in 6 blocks of Latehar and Gumla districts as part of their implementation program to graduate households out of extreme poverty in Jharkhand. This program works closely with ‘didis’ or women from poorest of the poor households, especially those belonging to particularly vulnerable tribal groups, to support them in breaking out of cyclical poverty by building durable and resilient livelihoods, ensuring food security, enabling access to government entitlements and active participation in social and financial institutions.
The graduation ceremony held at Aryabhatta Auditorium, Ranchi University was attended by C.P. Radhakrishnan, Governor of Jharkhand, Ipsita Thakur, Sr. Associate Director, Corporate Citizenships, KPMG and other top officials.
Governor CP Radhakrishnan who was the Chief Guest, felicitated the didis. He said, “It is also important to partner with the government to implement any program at scale and also to ensure last-mile delivery. Over a period of time, The Nudge Institute has successfully done this and is working in Rajasthan, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Karnataka, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Punjab. In all these states, it is closely working with the State Rural Livelihood Missions, DAY-NRLM of the Ministry of Rural Development and the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment of the Government of India. In 2024, The Nudge Institute aims to work with Two Lakh rural ultra-poor families in the country.”
Started in Jharkhand in 2018, to enable the poorest of poor families to progress out of poverty through empowering the women, this is the second cohort graduating from the program. The first cohort of 400 didis graduated in December 2022. The/Nudge Institute contextualized the ‘Graduation approach’ to Jharkhand’s context in the districts of Lohardaga, Latehar and Gumla. The Graduation approach’s efficacy is reflected in the evaluation published by Nobel Laureates Dr Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. The/Nudge has expanded its direct implementation now to Rajasthan and Karnataka with support of philanthropic donors to learn and continuously improve the program design.
The cohort of 625 didis who graduated today, achieved improved livelihood outcomes across standardized global measures. Over 94% of the didis’ households have begun consuming nutritious, balanced and sufficient food (tiranga bhojan). The didis are now financially secure with 95% of them earning an additional income of Rs 15000 annually through the program’s activities and report a minimum 35% growth in their productive assets. Through their participation, about 96% Didis are now saving on a weekly basis in SHGs and all of them have bank accounts and low-cost insurance. The program has ensured that they are now aware of their government entitlements and 97% of the households now have access to a minimum of two of the entitlements.
“On this occasion of the graduation of our second cohort of Didis, I am grateful to our partners and the Jharkhand government for supporting us through our journey. We are committed to further serving more women of the most vulnerable households to help achieve India’s goal of eliminating extreme poverty.” says Atul Satija, Founder and CEO of The/Nudge Institute.
This programme has been ably supported since its inception and over the course of the intervention by KPMG, LTIMindtree, Sabre, HCL Technologies, HDFC Parivartan and LGT Venture Philanthropy.
