Across 236 Saras Melas held over the past five years, more than 8,500 self-help group (SHG) women from Gujarat's Sakhi Mandals have rung up sales exceeding ₹39 crore — a number that Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel held up on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, as proof that grassroots women's enterprise can scale. The achievement is quiet but consequential: rural artisans turning mandal membership into market muscle.

In his post on X, CM Patel wrote in Gujarati: 'Gujaratni nari shakti ni siddhi joi ne atyant anand ane garv ni anubhuti thay chhe' — 'Seeing the achievements of Gujarat's women power fills me with immense joy and pride.' He credited the Saras Mela platform — state-organised craft-and-product fairs run under the Gujarat Livelihood Promotion Company (@GlpcLivelihood) — for unlocking this economic momentum for Sakhi Mandal sisters.

What the Saras Mela platform actually does for rural women

Saras Melas are government-facilitated fairs that give SHG members — typically women from marginalised rural households — direct retail access to urban consumers, bypassing middlemen. Products range from handloom textiles and pickles to handicrafts and organic foods. The ₹39 crore-plus figure across 236 fairs over five years translates to roughly ₹16.5 lakh per fair on average — modest individually, but collectively a proof of concept that state-backed market linkages move the needle on household incomes.

The Gujarat Livelihood Promotion Company, a state government body, administers these fairs and provides logistical and branding support to participating SHGs. With over 8,500 SHG members having participated as sellers, the programme reaches deep into Gujarat's panchayat fabric.

'Stri Shakti – Sakhi Shakti' at Vibrant Navratri 2026

CM Patel announced that this year's Vibrant Navratri Mahotsav will carry the theme 'Stri Shakti – Sakhi Shakti', and will provide a fresh platform for women entrepreneurs from Sakhi Mandals to showcase and sell their products. Navratri — nine nights of cultural celebration that Gujarat turns into a massive, high-footfall public event — offers unusual commercial exposure: hundreds of thousands of visitors, significant media attention, and a consumer base in a spending mood. Plugging SHG stalls into that ecosystem is a deliberate market-linkage play.

The move frames the festival not just as a cultural occasion but as an economic opportunity — a dual-use of the state's biggest annual gathering.

Patel's salute to Modi's 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' vision

CM Patel explicitly linked the SHG achievement to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' (Self-Reliant India) resolve, framing Gujarat's Sakhi Mandal network as a ground-level realisation of that national aspiration. The congratulatory message concluded with good wishes for the women's 'bright future' — a phrase that doubles as a political signal: this programme continues and expands. For the BJP, women's self-reliance at the village level has been a consistent governance talking point, and Saras Mela numbers give it a ledger entry.