Title: Self-Help Groups and Economic Empowerment of Rural Women: A Case Study
Abstract: For the last few years the subject 'Women Empowerment' is a matter of serious discussion. The subject became more popular after declaring 2001 as International Women Empowerment year. Empowerment is a multidimensional process, which should enable the individuals or a group of individuals to realize their full identity and powers in all spheres of life. It consists of greater access to knowledge and resources, greater autonomy in decision making to enable them to have greater ability to plan their lives, or have greater control over the circumstances that influence their lives and free them from the shackles imposed on them by custom, belief and practice. Empowerment of women may also mean equal status to the women opportunity and freedom to develop her. Empowering women socio-economically through increased awareness of their rights and duties as well as access to resources is a decisive step towards greater security for them.Ethically women as members of society should have their equal role. But throughout the world women occupy a particular status which is significantly different from that of their male counter-parts. This difference is clearly evident in our society which is patriarchal and tradition-bound with poor socio-economic condition and low rate of literacy. Efforts have been taken to empower women by launching various schemes and providing extra benefits for them. But in-spite of considerable improvement in the status of women, they still comprise the largest section of deprived population. It is widely recognized that the process of growth, economic transformation and development in particular has adversely affected women as a group. Lack of capital is a serious constraint to the development of women, particularly in rural areas, who find little or no access to credit. Credit can help women to take up farm-allied activities or small enterprises and enabling them to respond to the opportunities created by the process of economic development. In this situation micro-credit is emerging as a powerful instrument for overall development of rural women. In India, micro-credit is dominated by Self-Help Groups- (SHGs) bank linkage programme, aimed at providing a cost effective mechanism for providing financial services to the poor women. Based on the philosophy of peer pressure and group savings as collateral substitute, the SHG programme has been successful in not only meeting peculiar needs of poor women, but also in strengthening their collective self-help capacities at local level, leading to their economic empowerment. In this study I have tried to locate the role of Self-Help Groups towards the economic empowerment of women in Khejuri (Coastal Bay of Bengal), Purba Medinipur, W.B.Concept of Self-help Group (SHG)The concept of SHG was first initiated in Bangladesh in 1976 with the promise of providing credit to the poor without collateral, alleviating poverty and unleashing human creativity and endeavour of the poor people. Prof. Mohammad Yunus, Nobel laureate and eminent Bangladeshi economist, is credited with the concept of SHG over three decades ago. He developed 'Grameen Bank' in Bangladesh with the objective to empower poor people, especially poor women, through micro credit. In Sri Lanka, the thrift and credit movement was reviewed and revised in 1978 by Dr. P.A. Kiriwandeniya under the name 'SANSA'. This institution has created a high social impact in reducing rural indebtedness and poverty from 1978 to 2003 and it has been successful in raising the living standards of the rural people of Sri Lanka. In India the Self Help Group concept was developed by Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency (MYRADA) in the late 1980s. In the late 1990s evaluation reports of the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), a major programme for creating self-employment opportunities in rural areas reflected the flaws in the implementation of the programme. This led the central government to announce a programme called SwamaJayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY). …
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 10
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