M.P. Sagar

Performance Appraisal of Women Self Help Groups (W-SHGS) at Village Level in Rewari District of Haryana

An ex-post facto study was conducted in Rewari and Khol blocks of Rewari district in Haryana to assess the impact of dairy based women Self Help Groups (SHGs) on non members at village level in particular. The study reveals that SHGs were unable to bring significant improvement in employment generation, income level, financial management skills and living standard of non members. As there was no establishment of dairy by SHGs, non members didn’t get opportunity to work in dairy unit. So, there was no utilisation of spare time of non members. Non-members still depends on the moneylenders for credit due to lack of employment opportunity at village level. The study would help the government, private agencies and NGOs to take the considerable steps to flourish SHGs at village level.

Socio-Economic Status of Dairy Based Women Self Help Group Members under SGSY in Rewari District of Haryana, India

In India, women are responsible for growth in livestock sector. Rural women, besides performing household work, have been traditionally and predominantly engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry and dairy activities. In rural India, cattle and buffalo rearing has been traditionally been a responsibility of farm women but, women are more likely to be credit constrained, have restricted access to wage labour market and have limited decision-making and bargaining power within the household. Economic independence is essential for women’s empowerment. SHGs have emerged in order to help poor women to secure inputs like credit and other services (Chandrashekar, 2009). They work for group solidarity, selfgroup awareness and social and economic empowerment through democratic functioning. The SGSY is being implemented by the District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs) with basic objective to bring the poor families (Swarozgaris) above the poverty line (APL) by providing them incomegenerating assets through a mix of bank credit and governmental subsidy through SHG The present study was conducted in Rewari and Khol block of Rewari district Haryana, with the objective to know the socio-economic status of SHG members. The data on socioeconomic variables were collected from 90 respondents drawn from 30 SHGs. The study revealed that almost all the members were land less and found to belong to middle age group (35-46 years), married, practicing dairy as major occupation, small herd size and belonging to low income group. Hence, it may be concluded that SHG members are resource poor women farmers who have taken dairy as income generating activity for livelihood security by making access to credit through SHGs K e y w o r d s