BEST PRACTICES OF SELF HELP GROUPS AND WOMEN EMPOWERMENT: A CASE OF BARAK VALLEY OF ASSAM

Self help groups (SHGs) have emerged as popular method of working with people in recent years. Since SHG based micro finance programmes cover a large number of women, it is expected that such programmes will have an important bearing on womens empowerment. Self-Help Groups (SHGs) have emerged in order to help poor women to secure inputs like credit and other services. Micro finance and SHGs are effective in reducing poverty, empowering women, creating awareness and ensure sustainability of environment which finally results in sustainable development of the nation. To avert such a situation, growth with quality has became the paramount agenda of today among different stakeholders, as there is an over reaching concern about sustainability of the SHG movement in India. Self-help groups have been instrumental in empowerment by enabling women to work together in collective agency. An effort is made in this paper to make a comparative analysis on the quality and performance of the SHGs and the impact of SHGs on women members in Barak Valley of Assam (Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi districts). It is observed that due to fast growing of the SHG-bank linkage programme in the State, the quality of SHG has come under stress. Some of the factors affecting the quality of SHGs are the target oriented approach of the government in preparing group, inadequate incentive to NGOs for nurturing their groups etc. Further, it is observed from the Table 17 that impact on decision making pattern ranks first followed by economic empowerment and then psychological aspects. Confidence building ranks fourth while Social empowerment ranks the fifth and so on.