Social Inclusion of Women Through Microfinance: With Special Reference to Plantation Region of Karnataka State

The Self Help Group bank linkage programme in the last 22 years is becoming a well-known tool for banker’s developmental agencies and even for corporate houses. For the poverty alleviation, SHG bank linkage programmes are becoming popular and powerful means of providing financial assistance to needy and deserved. India is a land of villages and 60% of the population is depending upon agriculture. Agriculture is an unorganized and unrecognized industry in India. For the last 6 decades, the hopes of millions of people who depended on agriculture are not changed. All the government-sponsored programmes are a failure on account of many issues like favoritism, weak linkage, duplication, and bribery. The rural people are weak and lack of resource to solve their problem. This tendency gave the way for searching alternative ways to serve the rural people who are untouched by formal financial institutions, mainly rural women in particular and rural poor in general. The concept of an SHG is a new hope for the development of the rural area and empowerment of women. SHGs are becoming highly popular and recognized as useful tools to help the poor and as an alternative mechanism to meet the immediate requirement of the poor through savings creation, and thereby the harassment by the money lenders, traders have been reduced though not eliminated. Against this background, an attempt is made to understand the empowering of women. The study is an explorative study and statistical analysis are used in order to process the data and present in a meaningful manner. This study is carried out in plantation region of Chikkamgaluru District.