Asian Journal of Management

Sanjay Kanti Das ¹

Affiliations
1 Lumding College, Lumding, Nagaon, Assam-782447, IN

Abstract

Today's investor has a variety of options to choose from while making his/her investment decision. Saving and investment behaviour has always been an area of interest to the researcher. The economic cycles of boom, recession, depression and recovery not only effect the level of GDP but also the income of the households and hence the saving ratio and investment behavior. Keeping pace with the changing times and under the liberalized financial sector regime, the financial institutions are also decorated with innovative instruments to meet the growing demand of modern investors. But this innovative and diversified financial system could not lost the appeal of traditional means of investment. Through this study, an analysis has been made into investment behaviour of middle class households of Nagaon districts of Assam. The rationale behind choosing this study topic is the premise that the middle class in India has gained attention of the economists, policy makers and the marketers, as still there remains a considerable untapped potential in this income class of India. The study has been conducted to answer few important questions on the preference of the investment instruments and investment pattern of the middle class households, to know the various objectives of investment of the middle income class households and to know whether there has been any increase in their savings and the reasons for the same. Investment is one of the major issues of the middle class families as their small savings of today are to meet the expenses of tomorrow. This study also examines the risk tolerance capacity and investment horizon along with factors governing investment decisions. It is observed from saving and investment pattern of the middle class income households in Nagaon districts of Assam that Bank deposits (35.33%) are considered as the preferred investment option among the middle class investor's of the district. It is further observed that all age groups marked highest preference towards bank deposits and insurance investment so as to provide the benefit of safety and security of their life and investment. Similar feeling of preference towards investment in Bank deposits and insurance is also observed by all the respondents with different income slabs. It was found that majority of the respondents said that they look for tax advantage and high returns while investing in any instrument. Slight variations are also observed when respondents are classified on age and income groups. Further, it is observed that all the respondents marked interest towards medium term investment. Only some respondents of high income group show keen interest to build huge financial corpus. The study results brought out the fact that 71.33% of the respondents have recorded that their savings have increased in past five years. 31% of the households said that their savings have increased because of increase in their income which supports the hypothesis that the income and savings are directly related.

Keywords

Investor’s Behaviour, Middle Income Class, Nagaon Districts of Assam, Perception of Investors, Risk Tolerance.

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Sanjay Kanti Das ¹

Affiliations
1 Lumding College, Lumding, Nagaon, Assam-782447, IN

Abstract

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. Self help groups (SHGs) have emerged as popular method of working with people in recent years. This movement comes from the people's desires to meet their needs and determine their own destinies through the principle "by the people, for the people and of the people". The SHGs today have become a vehicle to pursue diverse developmental agendas and even for the profit motive. The proliferation of SHG has posed a serious challenge to sustain this movement by maintaining quality of SHGs and hence, the quality assessment of SHGs is now being considered as a key concern. 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. Several rating systems for micro-finance interventions and Self-Help Groups (SHGs) have been developed in the past. But most of these were restricted to understanding the creditworthiness of SHGs and employed indicators on performance on basic group functions and credit absorption capabilities. Social, empowerment and behavioural aspects of SHG functioning rarely found a place in the rating system. The present study differs from earlier studies as it covers descriptive study on grass ischolar_main issues relating to quality assessment of SHGs and a modest effort is also taken to study perception of SHG members about the quality assessment parameters. The study is limited to Barak Valley of Assam and data collected from the primary sources during first half of 2011. Parametric and non-parametric test used to analyse the data and to draw meaningful conclusion. is observed that due to fast growing of the SHG-bank linkage programme, 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 NGO's for nurturing their groups etc. It is further observed from the present study that Financial Management is the most critical factor where respondents are supporting highly followed by Plan and Vision.

Keywords

Barak Valley of Assam, Micro Finance, Quality Parameter, Quality Issues, Quality Assessment Tools, SHG-Bank Linkage Programme.

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