International Journal of Social Science Research (IJSSR)

Self-Help Groups as Instruments of Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Rural Assam

Economic empowerment of women has been declared as an urgent issue in the modern development agenda especially in areas characterized by structural vulnerability, gender inequality and poor livelihood opportunities. Assam, whose economy is mainly rural, where natural disasters are frequent, and regional inequalities are great, offers a great opportunity to look into community-based policy on empowerment of women. Self-Help Groups (SHGs) are among them as being used with the purpose of improving access of women to income-generating activities, financial services, and collective agency. The present study lies in the analysis of SHG-led women as economic empowerment in Assam through secondary data derived in peer-reviewed journal articles, doctorate theses, institutional reports and policy documents. The paper discusses how SHGs contribute to income generation, savings behaviour, credit access and financial inclusion; evaluates the advancement and success of SHG initiatives in the state; and considers the major challenges as well as policy implications. This analysis has shown that SHGs have impacted positively on enhancing the economic participation, financial discipline and involvement of women in formal financial institutions, which has empowered the economical decision making at household level. Nevertheless, the study also concludes that the results of empowerment are still unequal because of some limitations, including the inability to integrate with the market, insufficiency of the financial and managerial capabilities, geographical and infrastructural differences, institutional inefficiency, and susceptibility to the ecological and economic volatility, especially in flood-prone regions. The argument put forward in the paper is that even though SHGs have already created a good base towards economic empowerment of women in Assam, their transformative capabilities rest on the need to move past credit-based interventions towards a comprehensive policy framework that focuses on capacity building, diversification of livelihoods, market connectivity and institutional convergence. Such a comprehensive strategy is important in strengthening SHGs in order to promote sustainable, inclusive, and gender-responsive development in Assam. Keywords: Self-Help Groups; Women Economic Empowerment; Rural Assam; Financial Inclusion; Rural Development; Policy Implication.