The Catalyst Role of SHGs for Empowerment of Women

Empowerment of women is an essential part of human resource development. Self-Help Groups are one of the catalysts for empowering women in advanced countries after the Second World War. In India, the scheme of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) is pioneered in the era 1982-83 for systematically organizing women in groups and for providing them opportunities of self-employment on a sustained basis.
Thousands of rural women from the length and breadth of the country participated in this program, and take up a number of trades under the Self-Help Group placard. Women participation in Self-Help Groups has to be more meaningful and to be effective. There should be avenues for savings, investments and credit for them. The objective should be socially empower women so that their role as in others could be played with better results. Poverty alleviation is the ultimate goal of SHGs. Keeping in view the afore cited objective, Vikram Akula set up the first micro finance SKS Microfinance Pvt. Ltd. (SKS) in 1998, a new micro financing model in India, which is profitable and self-sustaining to provide microfinance to the poorest sections of the Indian. Society that earns a per capita less than INR 6,000 ($120) peryear. The SHG movement in India in general and Andhra Pradesh in particular, has metamorphosed the rural economic scenario perceptibly. This paper articulates the role SHGs for Empowerment of Women and covers the problems and perspectives of Selp-Help Groups in India exclusively in Andhra Pradesh.