Preface Rural poor including the women in India are influenced by multiple socioeconomic and cultural factors. Emancipation of women is a pre-requisite for nation’s economic development and social upliftment. The role of women and the need to empower them are central to human development programmes, including poverty alleviation. Over the last few years, ‘People’s participation’ and ‘Empowerment’ has become the buzz words in rural development and local planning. In these contexts, self help group has emerged as the most successful strategy, in the process of participatory development and empowerment of rural poor including women. The SHG is a viable organized setup to disburse micro-credit to the rural women for the purpose of making them enterprising and encouraging to enter into entrepreneurial activities. The formation of SHG is not ultimately a micro-credit project but also an empowerment process. The empowerment through SHGs would give benefits not only to the individual but also for the family and community as a whole through collective action for development. These SHGs have a common perception of need and impulse towards collective action. In this context, this book provides an account on the concept of SHG approach, group dynamics, livelihood and empowerment. A glimpse of past research on SHG approach in this book would help the future researchers, scholars, policy makers and practitioners. SHG approach in eastern Indian states with special emphasis on Chhattisgarh has been narrated with the detail of research methodologies to study SHG approach and their applications in analyses of twelve SHGs formed under four different programmes viz. NABARD’s SHG-Bank Linkage programme (SBLP), National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA). This book also reflects on the integrated methodologies to understand overall impact of SHG approach on empowerment and livelihood of rural poor including the women. The concept of group dynamics and its assessment is another important dimension that is discussed in this book. The dissertation work on the effectiveness of SHGs in improving livelihood and empowerment of rural poor in Chhattisgarh carried out during 2014-15 at Department of Agricultural Extension, Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Statistics, Institute of Agriculture, Visva-Bharati, Sriniketan by the first author in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (Agriculture) in Agricultural Extension under the supervision of second author has been presented in this book to give an understanding on integrated approach to study the SHGs. Authors gratefully acknowledge the Visva-Bharati University for this study. The works/ information of other researchers/ experts/ sources referred/ included in this book have also been thankfully acknowledged.

The concept of Self Help Group (SHG) has its roots in rural areas and it has been mooted along the rural poor to improve their living conditions. Though it is applicable to both men and women in our country, but it has been more successful among women and they can start economic activities for improving their livelihoods through SHG movement. Self Help Group (SHG) is a small voluntary association. It is informal and homogenous group of not more than twenty members. SHGs consist of maximum 20 members because any group having more than 20 members has to be registered under Indian legal system. That is why, it is recommended to be informal to keep them away from bureaucracy, corruption, unnecessary administrative expenditure and profit motive. In fact, it is a home grown model for poverty reduction which simultaneously works to empower and shape the lives of its members in a better way. Groups are expected to be homogenous so that the members do not have conflicting interest and all the members can participate freely without any fear. SHG movement has triggered off a silent revolution in the rural credit delivery system in India. SHGs have proved as an effective medium for delivering credit to rural poor for their socio-economic empowerment. In the development paradigm, SHG and micro-finance has evolved as a need-based programme for empowerment and alleviation of poverty to the so far neglected target groups (women, poor, deprived, etc.).

Self Help Group (SHG) and micro finance may be said a recent movement and the literature on SHG and micro finance is relatively one of the youngest. Review of past works in the field of SHG and related issues since 1995 has been considered, which helps to identify the research gap. Therefore, studies related to SHGs were reviewed and presented covering various aspects comprehensively.   2.1 Profile of the SHG Members   Hemalatha (1995) conducted study in Haryana and found that majority of women taking up pottery activity were illiterate, Sirki making women’s education ranged from illiteracy to primary level and bakery unit were illiterate.

In India, majority of the people live in rural areas and are engaged in agriculture, earning a subsistence wage. Development which has been focused on them seems to have just passed by them. In India out of the 147.90 million rural households around 60 per cent are cultivation households. Eighty-eight per cent are headed by small/marginal farmers with holding less than 2 hectares (Throat, 2005). Therefore to finance this category of the poor, there is an obligation to create opportunities where credit can be used in a meaningful way.

Present study was conducted in an Eastern Indian State ‘Chhattisgarh’, which was purposively selected keeping in view the importance of SHG movement in empowering rural poor in Eastern Indian States, home of the largest proportion of population below poverty line. To have in-depth micro level analyses, one district of Chhattisgarh was randomly selected, which happened to be the Kanker district.

A research methodology is the logical and systematic planning and directing of a research process to accomplish research goals. The components of research methods used in the present study are as follows: 5.1 Hypotheses 5.2 Sampling plan  5.3 Variables and their measurements 5.4 The interview schedule 5.5 Statistical analyses

Findings of the present investigation on effectiveness of self-help groups (SHGs) in improving livelihood and empowerment of rural poor in Kanker district of Chhattisgarh are presented under the following headings:     6.1 Features of SHGs formed under different programmes      6.2 Socio-personal, socio-economic and communicational profile of the members of SHGs     6.3 Dynamics and effectiveness of SHGs       6.4 Impact of SHGs on livelihood of the members      6.5 Influence of SHGs on empowerment of rural poor     6.6 Overall impact of SHG approach      6.7 Constraints faced by SHGs 

The main purpose of this chapter is to summarize the results to draw the conclusions on the basis of the foregoing analyses and to indicate some of the significant implications of the present study.   In previous Chapter, the study described a detail account of 12 SHGs, three SHGs from each of four schemes viz. NABARD’s SHG-Bank Linkage Programme (SBLP), National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) in Chhattisgarh state. However, looking back to this study with the salient findings and implications would be the precursor for looking ahead.

In the study of rural development, there are three frameworks of analysis, viz. neo-classical, Marxian and systems approaches. While the latter two are holistic approaches, the neo-classical framework provides the underpinning of modern microfinance, with its focus on the decision making of individual economic agents towards (short-term) profit or utility maximisation. Neo-classical discussion and policy prescriptions in microfinance are directed towards creating the conditions for the operation of free rural financial markets. Institutional economists have further used the imperfect information paradigm to focus on transaction costs of credit delivery that serve to explain and justify high interest rates charged by village moneylenders (Tankha, 2002).

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