Self Help Groups in West Bengal Province of India

The study reveals that the SHGs has done a good job in respect of women empowerment. A significant number of female respondents have confirmed that they have built a much confidence and consciousness about the surroundings. They can now augment their family income to a considerable extent through some subsidiary enterprises such as sewing, garland-making, synthetic bag making, animal husbandry etc. Moreover they use the loan and their savings in extreme need. They have asserted that after joining the group, they could easily move out of any kind of unnecessary bondages and they are now more conscious about education of their children, health and family related issues, several Govt. programmes etc. through the group discussions in the meetings. They insist on further improvement of the groups in terms of the provision of the proper training facilities so that they could start some profitable enterprises within their financial limit. In case of savings and loan disbursement criteria, the groups should increase their savings amount over time though the increment may be small. Most of the groups have good repayment behaviour. Both types of productive and consumptive loans a