Department of Extension Education, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141 001, India.
The concept of Self Help Groups (SHG) is relatively new to Punjab and there is dearth of empirical data regarding analysis of SHGs in the state. The present study therefore focussed on tracing the genesis and structure and evaluate the functional aspects of SHGs. The study sample comprised 222 SHG leaders and 888 SHG members from 74 randomly selected blocks. The major findings revealed that majority of SHGs were promoted by GOs and there were few SHGs promoted by NGOs. The results of the study revealed that monthly meetings was their regular feature and majority of SHGs was using saving for interloaning purposes. Further, majority of the SHGs were performing badly in terms of capacity building of members. Therefore, future focus of SHG must be on capacity building and skill upgradation of rural women.
