With respect to SHGs, what is the main objective of Community Investment Support Fund (CIS

Economic growth in India has been a double-edged sword — higher incomes have led to significant declines in poverty, while structural changes in the economy have been accompanied by increased economic inequality. Recent years have seen growing interest in understanding the drivers of rising income inequality in India. However, due to severe data limitations, most of the discussion is focused on the national level. Rural India is home to 70% of the nation’s population. The rural population resides mainly in villages — the 2011 census reports roughly 800 million people living in more than 600,000 villages. Although most of rural India’s workforce remains primarily involved in agriculture, a cumulative process of diversification through increasing importance of non-farm activities has been taking place in recent decades. One study observes this phenomenon and its implications in Palanpur over a period of six decades from 1957–58 to 2015. While conventional, nationally representative surveys are not able to monitor inequality trends at the village level, our surveys measure household incomes for the entire village on five separate occasions spanned by the survey period. We employ a measure of income that is both highly detailed and has benefited from extensive cross-checking and validation. (Source- UNU)