Merkel charms rural women from Pune

from the Financial Express

German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday met a group of rural women who were part of a Pune-based self help group (SHG) to discussed about the impact of SHGs in their lives.

Merkel visited the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD), which initiated the SHG Bank Linkage Programme with the German Technical Co-operation (GTZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development from Germany.

During her interaction with rural women, Merkel was so engrossed that her short stint supposed to be for seven minutes went on for more than 45 minutes. Her attempted to understand the problems faced by the rural women and the kind of assistance they required.

Merkel visited a handicrafts exhibition displaying the works from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and West Bengal. Merkel’s kind gesture touched the hearts of rural women. She also reviewed an array of rural development projects taken up by NABARD in collaboration with KfW and GTZ, the German development agencies mainly in the field of watershed, tribal development and microcredit.