Evaluation of Swarnajayanti Gram SwAROZGAR YojANA IN A BACKWARD Area of Telangana Region of A.P.

Any development strategy which neglects the need for enhancing the role of women cannot lead to national prosperity. Women are the vital human infrastructure and their empowerment would accelerate the pace of development. Investing in women’s capabilities and empowering them in all respects is the surest way of contributing to sustainable economic growth. The development of entrepreneurship among women has become an important aspect of the overall economic development. Hence, the need for designing exclusive self- employment and other development programmes for promotion of women entrepreneurship is being greatly stressed upon. The Government of India, since independence, has been emphasising the need for development of women entrepreneurial skills and their participation in nation building. In fact, they take abundant responsibilities and perform a wide spectrum of duties apart from household activities. Their significant contribution to the family makes them to think critically about their poverty problems and ways of overcoming them. This potentiality of women could be tapped to desire essential goods and services for their family and to uplift the family as a whole above the poverty line. Keeping this in view, a number of innovative schemes have been launched for the upliftment of women in our country. The level of self-employment among women is also quite low as they have very little control on the productive resources and production process. Some steps are taken to ensure greater accessibility of credit to women through schemes like financing of self-help groups and institutions like Rashtriya Mahila Kosh (RMK). The Government is also promoting local women’s self-help groups in a big way under the umbrella of Indira Mahila Yojana (IMY). Another scheme of economic empowerment of women, the Mahila Samruddhi Yojana (MSY) was introduced in 1993. In spite of these interventions, the basic problem that affects women’s roles and opportunities still remains to be tackled in a big way. This problem springs from their lack of independence caused by their limited skills, illiteracy, restricted mobility and lack of autonomous status, It is precisely because of this that many women development programmes either emphasise fully or have a component of income generation activity, so that there is money available in women’s hands and they move towards economic independence, and take the first step towards empowerment.