Impact of Micro Finance: Perceptions of Direct Stakeholders of Self Help Groups

Abstract

Self Help Group is a unique innovation of credit delivery technique and has produced positive impacts on two vital areas of national development, alleviation of poverty and women’s empowerment. Sixty five variables relating to impact of SHGs on members are identified from survey of literature and relevant perception of direct stakeholders whether the aspects like impact on members of SHG and its involvement in larger social issues should be peripheral or core components of quality indicators of SHG is perceived in this study. The study is conducted by using multi-stage random sampling method to collect primary data from the selected Development Blocks of Nagaon districts of Assam (India). It is observed that there was no significant effect of stakeholders on overall score on impact on members of SHG as Peripheral or Core issue. It is observed that different stakeholders believed that the impact on members of SHG and its involvement in larger social issues should be ‘somewhat core component’ as the mean value lies in between the scale range of 1 & 0 which represents the range of ‘somewhat core component’. It is further observed that Financial Institutions are less concerned about the social issues while Donor’s are more concerned about the social issues.