Progress, Performance and Problems of Self Help Group Movement in India:A Case Study of District Solan in Himachal Pradesh

The Self Help Group movement constitutes one of the leading models of Microfinance in India. Since last few years, the program has achieved a tremendous success in many parts of the country in terms of both financial accessibility and outreach to rural poor. However, still there is a dire need of quality research work to promote sustainability of the self help group movement and to remove the basic problems of poverty and unemployment in India. The present study tries to fill the gap by analyzing the performance, progress and problems of Self Help groups in Himachal State in India. For the purpose of study 60 members of 15 SHGs were taken by simple random sampling method in Solan district of Himachal Pradesh. The study concluded that SHGs has led to the generation large number of income generating activities in the area. It has also led to women empowerment and developing of banking habits among the members. SHGs promoted by NGO's are working quite well but the performance of government agencies are not adequate in this direction and are not able to reach very poor people in the area. The limitation of study is that only two blocks were studied in Solan distict and only a few members of each SHG could be studied due to homogeneity of their economic background.