Empowerment of Women Micro Entrepreneurs under NRLM: A Critical Analysis.

Abstract

Microfinance provides low cost finance and non-financial services to the vulnerable rural poor of the country in order to capacitate them to generate income through their microenterprises, which help them to uplift their financial strength. The new paradigm of microfinance put emphasis on women through Self Help Groups (SHGs) in order to improve their living standard by empowering them in all respect, and it helps to become an enterprising women. Taking the cognition of NABARD’s pioneering effort, in the same vein, Government of India launched Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) in1999 to make easy access to the subsidised credit for the enterprising women. Millions of SHGs were formed under SGSY around the nation, and now, it is restructured and renamed as National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). The principal objective of this study is to gauge the root causes of the obstacles which are facing by the women microfinance beneficiaries in their socio-economic empowerment process. This study concentrates on the major areas of empowerment of enterprising women. Adequate amount of data was collected through survey with the 280 NRLM beneficiaries as the randomly selected sample respondents. The outcome of the study shows that majority of the beneficiaries are involved in traditional sector i.e. chira muri making and agriculture based products and they use to sale it in their local market, mostly on credit. Naturally the women beneficiaries under NRLM are lived in a measurable condition. To substantiate this finding appropriate case vignette was formulated on the basis of personal interview with the beneficiaries in several occasions.