Women from self-help groups in Uttarakhand turned a food festival into a financial milestone — crossing ₹1 crore in sales at the Saras Food Festival 2026 held in Dehradun, in what the Chief Minister's Office of Uttarakhand described as a direct outcome of Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami's push for women entrepreneurship and local product promotion.

The CMO post, published on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, announced: 'Dehradun mein Saras Food Festival 2026 mein Swayam Sahayata Samoohon ki mahilaon ne ki 1 crore rupaye se adhik ki bikri' — 'Women of self-help groups at the Saras Food Festival 2026 in Dehradun have made sales of more than ₹1 crore, with women entrepreneurship and local products getting a boost under the leadership of Chief Minister Shri Pushkar Singh Dhami.'

What the Saras platform actually does for SHG women

The Saras Mela is a national-level fair series run under the Ministry of Rural Development as part of the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM). Its core purpose is blunt and practical: bridge the gap between rural women producers and urban buyers who would otherwise never find each other. For women who spend months making pickles, woven textiles, herbal products, and traditional foods in Uttarakhand's hill villages, a Saras event in a state capital like Dehradun is often their only direct shot at retail-scale revenue.

Uttarakhand has participated in the national Saras Mela circuit since at least 2017, steadily building a pipeline of SHG products into urban markets. The Dhami administration, in office since March 2021 and re-elected in 2022, has framed SHG empowerment as a centrepiece of its state-development agenda, launching Mission Shakti-aligned drives to scale local branding and women-led enterprise.

Why ₹1 crore at a single festival matters in this context

A ₹1 crore-plus sales figure at a single event is a concrete, countable indicator of market demand — not a grant, not a subsidy, but actual consumer spending on goods made by rural women. For SHG members whose monthly household incomes in hill districts can be modest, aggregated festival earnings translate directly into working capital for the next production cycle, repayment of micro-credit, and confidence to scale.

State governments across India have increasingly leaned on Saras-style melas as low-cost policy instruments: they generate media-friendly milestones, require minimal state infrastructure, and create genuine market linkages. Uttarakhand, with its geographic challenges and persistent out-migration from hill districts, has a particular incentive to valorise local products — a thriving SHG economy is also a retention argument for communities on the edge of abandoning their villages.

CM Dhami's women-economy bet and what it signals next

The Dhami government's repeated highlighting of SHG success stories — including at forums like Saras — is part of a deliberate political and policy positioning: Uttarakhand as a state where women's economic participation is measurable and growing. The next test will be whether these festival-linked sales translate into permanent market channels, or whether the momentum resets between events.

Budget allocations for SHG marketing infrastructure, warehousing, and branding support in the next Uttarakhand assembly session will signal how seriously the government intends to institutionalise what the Dehradun Saras Food Festival just demonstrated is possible in a single week.

A ₹1 crore moment at one festival is a data point. The harder question — whether Uttarakhand can make that kind of earning routine and year-round for its SHG women — is the one policymakers now have to answer.