Status of Microfinance Outreach in Indian State of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Developing economies worldwide are challenged with concerns of poverty, financial exclusion, gender inequality, income disparities and women empowerment that remains unsettled to present day. India with idea of improving on poverty, financial inclusion, empowering women India is committed to provide for financial assistance to far-flung regions that remained out of the purview of commercial banks. Microfinance has undeniably a crucial tool for poverty reduction to poorest strata of society. This paper aims to study outreach of microfinance in Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. With the objective of studying outreach the study aims to explore how effectively microfinance is reaching to target population. The three dimensions depth, breadth, and length are used to study outreach holistically. Depth studies number of rural population microfinance is serving. Breadth signifies microfinance beneficiaries below poverty line and length studies number of loan cycles by beneficiaries. The paper studies the objective through primary data survey method where 266 rural women were interviewed using schedule and further the analysis was conducted using percentage analysis for demographic profile of the respondents and chi square test to test the hypothesis. The analysis interpretation states microfinance is reaching to large number of poor household but not significantly to rural women below poverty line and the length of association with microfinance is low there are few numbers of cycles of loans and has no relationship with poverty.