MICRO FINANCE THROUGH SHG-BANK LINKAGE PROGRAMME –AN EVALUATIVE STUDY OF ASSAM

Abstract

Widespread poverty is a stable crisis and poverty alleviation has been a key component in development plan. Poverty is a complex set of problems, and that poverty alleviation can only be accomplished by a portfolio of policies and programs customized to explicit aspects of the problem. It recognizes that poverty alleviation efforts must reflect the best practices in public management, including the specification of concrete goals, the assessment of the strategies and the ability to learn and improve. Formulation of programmes to mitigate poverty essentially requires knowledge of what are now recognised as enormously complex causes. Empirical identification of these causes is a formidable task because of the conceptual issues involved in defining the many dimensions of poverty, the data constraints in measuring its incidence and econometric problems in estimating the relationships between the casual factors and poverty levels. The development of the concept of Self Help Group was one of the most prominent poverty alleviation programmes. This paper focuses on the status of micro finance through SHG bank linkage programme in Assam.