The National SARAS Mela is running at Punnami Ghat, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, from 13 to 31 October 2026. It is the first National SARAS Mela held outside Delhi-NCR. A PIB backgrounder on 21 October puts the participation at about 1,500 women self-help group (SHG) entrepreneurs and Lakhpati Didis from 34 States and Union Territories, across more than 650 stalls of regional textiles, handicrafts, and natural and processed foods. The Mela is organised by the Ministry of Rural Development with the Government of Andhra Pradesh and was inaugurated by the President on 15 October.
The figure the backgrounder places at the start of the story is the most telling one: the first National SARAS Mela, held in Delhi in 1999, had about 65 beneficiaries.
Three kinds of mela, and why the distinction matters
The SARAS name is attached to several different events, and they are easily confused.
- National SARAS Mela — the flagship national event, held in Delhi-NCR until this year and now moved to Vijayawada. The backgrounder counts 117 National SARAS Melas to date.
- SARAS Aajeevika Mela — a separate, long-running fair in the National Capital Region under the same mission; the 2026 edition was scheduled at Leisure Valley Park, Gurugram, from 22 October to 6 November. So the national flagship has left Delhi-NCR, but the SARAS brand has not.
- State, regional and district SARAS Melas — every State and UT is expected to hold at least two State-level melas a year, which brings the national total to about 50 events annually.
The digital extension is eSARAS, an online marketplace for SHG products that continues selling after the stalls are dismantled.
A note on the name: SARAS is widely written as an acronym, but the official releases do not expand it, and the expansions in circulation do not agree. Treat SARAS as the name of the programme and do not memorise an expansion that cannot be sourced.
Where DAY-NRLM comes from
The melas are run under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), and the mission is the end of a long line of self-employment programmes. The lineage is a standard exam chain:
| Programme | Year | What it was |
|---|---|---|
| IRDP — Integrated Rural Development Programme | 1978-80 | Subsidised loans for assets to individual poor households |
| DWCRA — Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas | 1982 | Group-based activity for rural women, a sub-scheme of IRDP |
| SGSY — Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana | April 1999 | Merged IRDP, TRYSEM, DWCRA, SITRA, GKY and MWS into one self-employment programme built around SHGs |
| NRLM — "Aajeevika" | June 2011 | SGSY restructured into a mission; launched at Banswara, Rajasthan |
| DAY-NRLM | November 2015 | NRLM renamed Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana |
The design change from IRDP to NRLM is the substantive one. IRDP gave an individual a loan and an asset — a buffalo, a cart — and measured success by the number of loans. The repayment and survival record of those assets was poor. SGSY moved to groups. NRLM went further: it is built on the premise that the poor need institutions of their own before they can use credit well, and that building those institutions takes years rather than one loan cycle.
The architecture: from a group of ten to a federation
NRLM's core commitment is to bring at least one woman from every poor rural household into an SHG. The structure it builds has three levels:
- Self-help group — typically 10 to 20 women who save small amounts regularly, lend to one another from the pool, and keep their own books.
- Village Organisation (VO) — a federation of the SHGs in a village.
- Cluster Level Federation (CLF) — a federation of village organisations across a cluster of villages.
Money flows through this structure in a particular order. The mission first gives SHGs a revolving fund to strengthen their internal lending, then a community investment fund routed through the federations, and the decisive step is bank linkage — repeated loans from commercial banks to the group, on the strength of its savings discipline and repayment record. The federations do what a single SHG cannot: bulk purchasing, aggregation of produce, negotiation with buyers, and the training of community resource persons.
The same structure is now used to deliver services well beyond credit — the Pension Sakhis trained to enrol members in pension schemes are one example of the SHG network being used as a last-mile delivery channel.
The Lakhpati Didi measure, read precisely
Lakhpati Didi is an outcome-oriented initiative under DAY-NRLM. The official definition has three parts, and each one matters:
- a member of an SHG,
- whose household earns at least ₹1 lakh a year,
- on a sustainable basis, assessed across at least four agricultural seasons or business cycles, with an average monthly income above ₹10,000.
Read closely, the definition contains two thresholds. ₹10,000 a month is ₹1.2 lakh a year, so the monthly-average test is slightly stricter than the annual one. The four-season requirement is the guard against counting a single good harvest or a festival-season windfall as a lasting income.
The unit is the household, not the woman. A household can cross ₹1 lakh through any combination of incomes — the woman's enterprise, a husband's wage, a remittance. The measure therefore records household livelihood diversification linked to SHG membership. It does not, by itself, measure what the woman earns or controls. That distinction is the one a careful answer on women's economic empowerment should draw.
The targets, in order
| Date | Target or milestone |
|---|---|
| August 2023 | Ambition announced: 2 crore Lakhpati Didis |
| February 2024 (Interim Budget 2024-25) | Target raised to 3 crore |
| About December 2025 | 3 crore milestone reached, more than a year ahead of the original March 2027 timeline |
| February 2026 | Target doubled to 6 crore |
Sources differ on the end date for the six-crore target: the PMO's account gives March 2029, while ministerial remarks have referred to 2029-30. At Vijayawada, the Rural Development Minister was reported as saying that about 3.5 crore women had already reached the milestone. The next phase, the backgrounder says, puts the emphasis on sustaining income gains and helping enterprises grow — which is where markets come in.
Why market access is the hard part
The backgrounder states the problem in one sentence: making a product is only the first step. An SHG producing pickles, handloom saris or bamboo craft in a district headquarters faces four obstacles that production skill does not solve:
- Customers beyond the village, where prices are higher and demand is wider.
- Market information — what designs, sizes, packaging and price points urban buyers want.
- Presentation — branding, labelling, quality consistency and certification.
- Repeat channels — buyers who order again after the first sale.
A mela addresses the first two directly: the entrepreneur meets the buyer, watches what sells and what does not, and learns the price the market will bear. That is price discovery and product feedback, and for a first-time seller it is worth more than the sales.
The scale arithmetic, however, should be stated honestly. The backgrounder records annual sales exceeding ₹200 crore through the National SARAS Melas. Against a network of crores of SHG women, that is a showcase, not a livelihood channel. The durable income has to come from what the mela leads to: institutional buyers, bulk orders, eSARAS, and longer-term buyer-seller linkages. The backgrounder says as much when it describes the melas as supporting the "transition from livelihood creation to enterprise growth".
Why move the national mela out of Delhi
The backgrounder ties the move to a wider approach: taking national platforms closer to producers and consumers across India, in line with the practice of holding international meetings such as G20 and BRICS events in cities across the country rather than only in the capital.
The practical effects are concrete. A woman entrepreneur from the South or the North-East faces lower travel costs and a buyer base closer to her own regional market. A host State's own SHGs get the national stage at home. And a regional consumer base — in this case the Krishna delta and coastal Andhra — gets direct access to products that otherwise reach it only through intermediaries.
The same reasoning applies to the artisan fairs run by other ministries, such as the Shilp Samagam Mela for denotified and nomadic communities, which opened its own run at Guwahati this week.
Where this fits in the financial-inclusion story
Before 2014, the SHG-Bank Linkage Programme — begun as a NABARD pilot in 1992 — was the main route by which poor rural women reached formal credit. Universal individual accounts came later, and the twelve-year record of PM Jan Dhan Yojana, in which women hold a majority of accounts, sits alongside the SHG system rather than replacing it. The account gives a woman a place to receive money; the group gives her credit, a peer network and, increasingly, a market.
🔑 Revision block
- The event: National SARAS Mela, 13-31 October 2026, Punnami Ghat, Vijayawada — the first outside Delhi-NCR; about 1,500 women entrepreneurs, 34 States/UTs, 650+ stalls; inaugurated by the President on 15 October.
- History: first National SARAS Mela in Delhi, 1999, about 65 beneficiaries; 117 national melas to date; States hold at least two State-level melas a year (about 50 events annually).
- Separate events: SARAS Aajeevika Mela (Gurugram, 22 Oct-6 Nov 2026); eSARAS = online marketplace.
- Lineage: IRDP (1978-80) → DWCRA (1982) → SGSY (April 1999, merged six schemes) → NRLM "Aajeevika" (June 2011, Banswara) → DAY-NRLM (November 2015).
- Structure: SHG (10-20 women) → Village Organisation → Cluster Level Federation; revolving fund, community investment fund, bank linkage.
- Lakhpati Didi: SHG member whose household earns ₹1 lakh+ a year, sustained over four seasons or business cycles, average > ₹10,000 a month.
- Targets: 2 crore (Aug 2023) → 3 crore (Interim Budget 2024-25) → reached about Dec 2025 → 6 crore (Feb 2026; end date March 2029 or 2029-30 depending on the source).
- Ministry: Rural Development.
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. The National SARAS Mela 2026 at Vijayawada is notable because it is the: (a) first National SARAS Mela organised outside Delhi-NCR (b) first SARAS Mela ever organised (c) first mela organised under the Ministry of Textiles (d) first mela restricted to Lakhpati Didis
→ (a) The series began in Delhi in 1999; this is the first time the national flagship has been held outside the National Capital Region.
Q2. SARAS Melas are organised under which programme? (a) PM Vishwakarma (b) Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission (c) Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (d) Stand-Up India
→ (b) They are run under DAY-NRLM of the Ministry of Rural Development to give SHG products a market.
Q3. The Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY), launched in 1999, was formed by merging several schemes. Which of the following was NOT among them? (a) IRDP (b) TRYSEM (c) MGNREGA (d) DWCRA
→ (c) MGNREGA is a wage-employment guarantee enacted in 2005; SGSY merged IRDP, TRYSEM, DWCRA, SITRA, GKY and MWS.
Q4. The National Rural Livelihoods Mission was renamed Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - NRLM in: (a) 2011 (b) 2013 (c) 2015 (d) 2019
→ (c) NRLM was launched in June 2011 and renamed in November 2015.
Q5. Under NRLM's institutional design, a federation of self-help groups at the village level is called a: (a) Village Organisation (b) Cluster Level Federation (c) Gram Sabha (d) Farmer Producer Organisation
→ (a) SHGs federate into Village Organisations, which in turn federate into Cluster Level Federations.
Q6. A Lakhpati Didi is defined on the basis of: (a) the woman's individual savings in her bank account (b) the SHG's total annual turnover (c) the woman's land ownership (d) the household's sustained annual income of at least ₹1 lakh
→ (d) The unit is the household, and the income must be sustained across at least four agricultural seasons or business cycles.
Q7. The Lakhpati Didi target was raised from two crore to three crore in: (a) the Independence Day address of 2023 (b) the Interim Budget 2024-25 (c) the Union Budget 2025-26 (d) the Union Budget 2026-27
→ (b) The ambition of two crore was set out in August 2023 and raised to three crore in the Interim Budget of February 2024.
Q8. The four-season or four-business-cycle requirement in the Lakhpati Didi definition is intended mainly to: (a) restrict the scheme to farming households (b) align the scheme with the financial year (c) ensure that the income is sustainable rather than a one-time gain (d) exclude urban self-help groups
→ (c) It prevents a single good harvest or a festival-season windfall from being counted as a lasting income.
Q9. eSARAS is best described as: (a) a digital marketplace for products made by rural self-help groups (b) an electronic payment system for MGNREGA wages (c) a skilling portal for rural youth (d) a credit-rating system for SHGs
→ (a) It extends the market access of the physical melas to online buyers.
Q10. The main economic function of a SARAS Mela for a first-time SHG entrepreneur is best described as: (a) a source of interest-free credit (b) a guaranteed government procurement contract (c) a subsidy on raw materials (d) direct contact with buyers, enabling price discovery and product feedback
→ (d) Meeting buyers shows the entrepreneur what sells and at what price — information that production skill alone does not provide.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Rural livelihood programmes are a steady feature of CDS Economy, and the questions reliably target lineage, ministry and definition rather than the event itself.
The first form is the merger question: which schemes were merged into SGSY in 1999, with MGNREGA, PMGSY or Indira Awaas Yojana slipped in as the odd one out. The six merged schemes — IRDP, TRYSEM, DWCRA, SITRA, GKY, MWS — are worth one line of memory.
The second is the year-and-rename question. NRLM 2011, DAY-NRLM 2015. A distractor will often be the separate DDU-GKY skilling scheme, whose name is similar and whose function is different; DDU-GKY trains rural youth for wage jobs, DAY-NRLM builds women's institutions for self-employment.
The third is the definition question: what makes a Lakhpati Didi. The household unit and the sustained-income test are the two elements an examiner can bend into a false statement — "a woman whose own income exceeds ₹1 lakh" is subtly wrong.
The fourth is the ministry question: SARAS and DAY-NRLM belong to Rural Development, not Textiles, MSME or Women and Child Development.
For a written answer on women's economic empowerment, the proposition worth making is that India's rural livelihood policy moved from giving individuals assets (IRDP) to building women's own institutions (NRLM), and that its present frontier is markets rather than credit. State the federation structure, state precisely what the Lakhpati Didi measure counts and what it does not, and argue that the test of the six-crore target will be whether incomes are sustained once the counting is done.
Preparing for CDS/OTA? For every welfare programme, learn its ministry, its year and the scheme it replaced — the lineage table answers most of what the paper asks. Start with our CDS/OTA study material, follow the daily CDS current affairs, and prepare with our faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by Aditya Tiwari — Economy & Social Policy faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk.