Economic Empowerment of Poor Through Self Help Groups in India

In India, one of the plights of poor people is the inaccessibility to the organized credit. There is no way to come out of the vicious circle of poverty without additional funding from any source. The unorganized sector, they resort to make them poorer due to the unscrupulous practices of pawn lenders. Self Help Groups (SHGs), the small informal mutual help groups, tend to provide a transparent system of receiving funds out of voluntary group contributions. The present paper lists down various institutions promoting SHGs across the country. The paper tends to gauge to what extent, the SHGs have contributed to alleviation of poverty by making them empowered financially