Impact of Self Employment Schemes on Socio - Economic Development of Beneficiaries: Himachal Pradesh Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation

The social- economic position of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes is very weak in India. Government of India has taken the steps after the adoption of its Constitution for their development. Special provisions have been made in the constitution for the development of these classes and subsequently followed in the planning and budgetary system. Central Government provide SCA under SCP &TSP and opened special Corporations, resulting the birth of Himachal Pradesh Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation in 1979. It is purely a welfare organisation without any profit motive. It contributed a lot in the upliftment of scheduled groups of the society. The Corporation specially has been established for the exclusive benefit of the scheduled groups. Since the Corporation has been established for the upliftment of this class of people so need has been felt to measure the performance of the Corporation of the utilisation of funds given in various approved ten schemes. It is also pertinent to find out whether the scheduled families after getting financial assistance from this institution have improved their economic and social condition or not. Furthermore, an effort has been made to cover all the sub-castes of scheduled groups being benefited from the Corporation. For this objective of the research paper the data has been collected from 1069 beneficiaries in different ten schemes of the corporation from all the twelve districts indicating the social and economic condition of beneficiaries before availing the facilities and after fully utilizing the facilities. The different statistical tools have been applied to understand the social and economic changes of beneficiaries financed by HPSC/STDC.