Sisters are the Lakshmi of the home — and this Diwali, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan turned that sentiment into a scorecard. In a detailed post on Sunday, 8 November 2026, Chouhan laid out the scale of rural women's economic transformation under the government's self-help group mission, anchoring a Diwali greeting in hard numbers and a fresh credit pledge.

From savings circles to ₹14.24 lakh crore: the SHG arc

The minister posted — in Hindi — that more than 10 crore rural women are now linked to over 92 lakh Self Help Groups (SHGs), and that these groups have collectively received ₹14.24 lakh crore in bank credit so far. These figures, presented as the latest reported data, capture the sheer breadth of the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), the central government scheme that has been the institutional backbone of rural women's financial inclusion since it replaced the earlier Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana in 2011.

Chouhan also highlighted that 5.12 crore SHG women have been trained in agriculture, horticulture and livestock development — a push to integrate women directly into farm productivity, not just household savings. Another 1.50 crore women, he noted, have established themselves as entrepreneurs across agricultural and non-agricultural sectors.

Lakhpati Didi: 4 crore cleared, 6 crore in sight

The standout milestone in Chouhan's post is the Lakhpati Didi count. Lakhpati Didi — literally 'millionaire sister' — refers to rural women who earn at least ₹1 lakh annually through sustainable livelihoods under the NRLM framework. Nearly 4 crore women have crossed that threshold, the minister said. The ambition, he added, belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi: to push that number to 6 crore.

To get there, the government has set out a fresh financing roadmap. Over the next five years, the target is to extend ₹10 lakh crore in credit to SHGs and an additional ₹1 lakh crore directly to individual women members. It is a significant step-up — using credit supply as the accelerant for the final push toward 6 crore Lakhpati Didis.

Diwali framing and the Viksit Bharat thread

Chouhan wove the welfare data into a Diwali message, writing: 'जब बहन आत्मनिर्भर बनती है, तो गाँव समृद्ध होता है' ('When a sister becomes self-reliant, the village prospers'). He cast the goal of women's economic independence as a prerequisite for the larger Viksit Bharat vision — the government's headline aspiration of a developed India. The personal register was deliberate: Chouhan, whose political identity in Madhya Pradesh was built substantially on welfare schemes for women — including the well-known Ladli Behna Yojana during his tenure as Chief Minister — framed the data as a personal mission, not just a ministerial brief.

The numbers, the new credit pledge, and the Diwali occasion combined to make this more than a seasonal greeting. It was, in effect, a mid-term progress report on one of rural India's most ambitious financial inclusion drives — and a signal that the 6-crore Lakhpati Didi target is now squarely on the minister's accountability clock.