Empowerment of Rural Women Through Self Help Groups

Book excerpt: All over the world there is a realization that the best way to tackle poverty and enable the community to improve its quality of life is through social mobilization of poor, especially women into Self Help Groups. Ever since Independence a number of innovative schemes have been launched for the upliftment of women in our country. Indian Government has taken lot of initiatives to strengthen the institutional rural credit system and development programmes. Viewing it in the welfare programmes of Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2002) and shifting the concept of Development to Empowerment. The Indian Government adopted the approach of Self Help Groups (SHGs) to uplift the rural women. The empowerment of women through Self Help Groups (SHGs) would lead to benefits not only to the individual woman and women groups but also the families and community as a whole through collective action for development. The book will be highly useful to students of social studies especially Women Studies, Social Work, Sociology, Economics and also to the students and research scholars specialising in Human Development and NGO s and also other functionaries dealing with women.