Economic Empowerment of Tribal Women Artisans of Malkangiri through Micro-finance and Micro-credit – A Suggestive Growth Model of Sustainability

Abstract

Empirically, empowerment denotes a degree of autonomy and selfdetermination enabling the people to represent their interest by acting on their own authority and power to control their lives, while sustainability generates the ability to maintain a balance between the need and avoids the depletion of natural resources for the balanced economic growth, thought for social-wellbeingand attention for the need of future generations.Enterprising the two in development philosophy, Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach acclaims that the poverty has its roots in the deprivation of basic capabilities, not due to the a consequence of low income. Through inclusive welfare approach, the development perspective provides people greater freedom and choice to increase capabilities; to focus not only on the means but also on people's ends, and on the freedom (constitutive and instrumental) needed to satisfy these ends. Microfinance and micro-credit are in the one instrumental freedom that involves access to credit and capital for the poor borrowers lacking collaterals. The paper is an humble attempt of research on the excluded tribal women artisans of Malkangiri and their basic threshold of capability as the central social goal for their inclusive development. Investigating the observations, the present study aims to examine the level of women's empowerment, as promoted by the introduction of micro-finance and micro-credit programs, in one of the least developed districts of India - Malkanagiri, in Odisha; and thereafter, it proposes a sustainable suggestive growth model based on the findings.