From hesitating to step outside their homes to running a thriving herbal-products business — ten women from Chhota Udaipur district, Gujarat, have rewritten their own story, and Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel shared it with the nation on Monday, October 12, 2026.

The CM's post, written in Gujarati, centres on Hansaben Rathwa, who leads the 'Dhruvika Sakhi Mandal' — a self-help group that has become a small enterprise in its own right. Under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), the group received a revolving fund that seeded a cottage industry producing herbal products, soaps, and shampoos.

From a Revolving Fund to a Running Business

The revolving-fund model at the heart of NRLM is straightforward but powerful: a seed amount is lent to a group, repaid, then re-lent — keeping capital in circulation without dependency on fresh grants. For Dhruvika Sakhi Mandal's 10 members, that capital unlocked a product line they now sell both at local fairs and online, reaching buyers well beyond Chhota Udaipur.

CM Patel quoted Hansaben's own words in the post: 'Sakhi Mandal thaki baheno aarthik rite saddhar bani chhe ane temno aatmavishwas pan khub vadhyo chhe' — 'Through the Sakhi Mandal, women have become financially strong and their self-confidence has grown greatly.' That self-confidence, the CM notes, is the real headline: women who once hesitated to speak in public now negotiate sales and manage accounts.

Hansaben's Gratitude and the '25 Years of Service' Frame

The post carries a deliberate political inflection. Hansaben is quoted thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government for economically and socially empowering rural women. CM Patel then frames this grassroots success as the 'true fruit' (faḷashrutiḥ) of Modi's 25 uninterrupted years of public service — a reference to the BJP's ongoing #SevaSankapAbhiyaan and #SevaKiKahani campaigns, which collect and amplify stories of citizens whose lives have changed under the party's governments in Gujarat and at the Centre.

The campaigns serve a dual purpose: documenting tangible outcomes of flagship schemes, and building a narrative around Modi's political anniversary as Gujarat CM (2001) through his current tenure as PM — a span the BJP marks as a continuous arc of governance.

NRLM's Reach and the Sakhi Mandal Network

The National Rural Livelihoods Mission, launched by the Central government, is among India's largest poverty-alleviation programmes, working through a network of women's self-help groups — called Sakhi Mandals in Gujarat — across rural districts. The programme provides training, revolving funds, and linkages to bank credit. Tribal districts like Chhota Udaipur, with significant Adivasi populations including the Rathwa community to which Hansaben belongs, are priority zones for NRLM outreach.

Stories like Dhruvika Sakhi Mandal's — small in scale, specific in detail — are precisely the kind the government leans on to demonstrate last-mile delivery of welfare schemes. Whether measured in rupees earned or in a woman walking into a fair to sell her own product, the metrics are human-sized. That is the point.