with men. However, in most developing countries, women
have a low social and economic status (Gaonkar, 2004).
Emancipation of women is a pre-requisite for nation's
economic development and social upliftment (Dey et.al,
2014). Poverty is the main obstacle for the improvement in
the living standard of the women. The role of women and
the need to empower them are the main focus of human
development programmes i.e. Millennium Development
Goals, including poverty alleviation (Report on India’s
MDGs, 2012).
Apart from myriad programs relating to poverty
alleviation has been started, it was observed that micro
credit system through SHGs bank linkage programme
plays a very significant role for the woman empowerment
in rural areas so as to the poor families could be benefited.
Rapid progress in SHG formation has now turned into an
empowerment movement among women across the
country. Economic empowerment results in women’s
ability to influence or make decision independently,
increased self confidence, better status and role in
household etc (Hardeep and Harkiranjeet, 2013).
The empowerment of women through SHGs would give
benefit not only to the women at individual level but also
for the family and community as a whole through
collective action for development (Singh, 2013). Micro-
finance programmes are important initiatives for providing
small credit to the rural poor in order to alleviate poverty.
Micro-financing programmes through Self-Help Groups
(SHGs), introduced in several parts of India, have the
potential to minimize the problem of inadequate access of
the poor to the banking services. Since women
empowerment is critical to the socio-economic progress of
the country, investing in women’s capacity building and
empowering them to exercise their choices is not only
valuable itself but is also the surest way to contribute to
economic growth and overall development (Dasgupta,
2001; Dhavamani, 2010).
Empowerment of women has now become a key issue in
the Government’s Five-Year Plans-by organizing women
into SHGs to make the beginning of a major process of
empowering women. Whilst, the agenda of SHGs is
‘Empowerment’ and shift from dormant masses of the
rural women to vibrant masses by bringing more income
in the hands and control of women so that they can lead a
better social life.
In the state of Haryana, the SHG- Bank linkage
programme started in 1997-98. Since then the number of
SHGs linked to the banks have increased considerably
especially during the last few years. But the district Mewat
was carved out from the district Gurgaon on 4 April, 2005,
as it is socio-economically backward district in the state.
Therefore in order to access the success of this particular
programme in Haryana, an attempt is going to be made to
study the SHGs bank linkage programme for the
upliftment of poor women of Nuh block of Mewat district
in Haryana.