Self Help Groups: Key to Empowerment of Rural Women

The established fact today is that national economic growth alone cannot curtail the growth of mass poverty. Over the decades, almost one-sided emphasis on economic achievements by national policy makers has set in motion a process of alarming socio-economic polarization and the deepening of social cleavages in rural areas. Past technocratic approaches to poverty alleviation have failed to produce expected results. Since the poor have become too numerous to be healed from outside, ‘self help promotion’ has emerged as a new paradigm for combating poverty. This is high time that it should be a matter of prime concern for all those social consciousness driven people to banish poverty through new approach like Self help Groups. In this context, developing the programmes for the poor. Self Help Group has gained recognition and accepted as one of the new paradigms for combating poverty through socio-economic development of the poor, with special emphasis on social mobility and livelihood security. This has been effectively depicted through this present book. The book has been divided into six chapters Viz., 1. Introduction -Self help Group (SHGs) in Karnataka State; 2. Previous Evidences and Studies of self help groups; 3. Study Methods, Tools and techniques employed; 4. Results, Discussions and Interpretations; 5. Synoptic Overview and Conclusions, and 6 references. It is hoped that the book will greatly help the scholars, development workers, NGOs, and policy planners to promote SHGs for empowering rural women folks for their round development.