SELF HELP GROUPS PERFORMANCE IN INDIA

In most South-Asian countries, the status of women is low and their socio-economic conditions are much below than that of men. The flow of financial assistance to them is too marginal to enable them to cross the poverty line. Therefore a need to create a grassroot organizational base to enable women to come together to analyse their issues and problems themselves, and to fulfill their needs was strongly advocated. In fact, experience shows that some of the successful ‘group-based participatory programmes’ have made significant improvement in the conditions of poor women. The group based approach not only enables the poor to accumulate capital by way of small savings but also helps them to get access