Impact of Self-Help Group Membership on the Women Artisans of Shantiniketan: An Empirical Study

Micro-finance refers to small savings, credit and insurance services extended to socially and economically disadvantaged segments of society. The women artisans from Shantiniketan leather cluster, which has the long tradition of leather bags and other accessories manufacturing, have changed their lives and their socio-living condition in many aspects by adopting the way of self-help group formation under different coordinating agencies, specially the non-governmental organizations (NG0s) since 1992. These self-help groups have been extended soft loans of various nature through the respective coordinating agencies and the initiative has added different new positive dimensions in respects to the members of such groups. This structured questionnaire based feedback based empirical study attempts to evaluate the level of positive change occurred in the life of other-wise under-privileged rural women artisans engaged in leather craftsmanship under several self-help groups coordinated by different coordinating NGOs at the grass-ischolar_main level.