Does Participation in Van Dhan Self-Help Groups Empower Tribal Women? An Empirical Study on Entrepreneurial Development in the Bodoland Territorial Region of India

This study examines how participation in Van Dhan Self-Help Groups (VDSHGs) under Pradhan Mantri Van Dhan Yojana (PMVDY) shapes the entrepreneurial capabilities of Bodo women in Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR). Drawing on Sen’s Capability Approach (CA), it analyses how personal, social, institutional, and environmental conversion factors mediate the transformation of programme resources into valued entrepreneurial functionings. A qualitative-dominant case study design, supported by descriptive quantitative data, was employed, involving 710 beneficiaries across 355 VDSHGs in twelve Van Dhan Vikas Kendra Clusters (VDVKCs) in Kokrajhar and Baksa districts. Findings indicate that PMVDY contributed to women’s entrepreneurial capabilities through access to training, productive assets (including machinery and equipment and revolving funds), engagement in value-addition activities, market linkage platforms, and collective enterprise structures. VDSHG participation facilitated the expansion of collective agency, decision-making confidence, mobility, and market engagement, enabling livelihood diversification and income generation. The programme also enabled women to transform Indigenous knowledge, including weaving traditions, agricultural practices, and non-timber forest produce (NTFP)-based livelihood activities, into market-oriented enterprises. However, capability expansion remained uneven and conditional, as institutional limitations interacted with personal, social, and environmental constraints, including patriarchal norms, limited education, linguistic barriers, perceived political considerations in group selection, inadequate baseline assessments, infrastructural deficiencies, misaligned machinery, weak post-training follow-up, and governance challenges. The study contributes to Self-Help Group (SHG), women’s empowerment, Indigenous entrepreneurship, and CA literature by demonstrating that tribal women’s entrepreneurial empowerment depends not only on resource provision but also on context-sensitive institutional arrangements that recognise ecological knowledge, cultural practices, and collective agency. The study concludes that PMVDY represents a promising yet conditional pathway for advancing tribal women’s entrepreneurial capabilities and empowerment.