Livelihood Pattern and Financial Discipline of Self-Help Groups in Rural Tripura - A Regression Approach

Inclusive growth of an economy is indispensable for holistic development. The benefits of growth need to percolate amongst the poor people. Poverty alleviation through Self Help Group Model (SHG) of micro financing and financial inclusion has been a great instrumental success in India. The bank linkage programme launched in 1992-93 by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is such a micro finance programme to give institutional credit facility to the poor people through the SHG. There are approximately 6.22 lakhs rural households in Tripura and out of these 2.58 lakhs households have been covered under SHGs. Moreover, a substantial amount of government fund is allocated for such SHG programme. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to examine the financial discipline and livelihood activities of these SHGs. The present study tries to examine livelihood pattern and financial discipline of Self-Help Groups in rural Tripura. The SHGs which practise non-farm livelihoods absorb higher loan and their repayment status is better than SHGs practising farm livelihood. Since, gestation period of return from investment for small business is much shorter than farming and livestock rearing so, loan repayment rates for those SHGs are higher. Moreover, in agriculture and livestock rearing practices the level of uncertainty as well as risk factors involved are higher and gestation period of return is longer, so the financial discipline for those SHGs are weaker compared to the SHGs practising small business. It is also observed that, the villages which are located along the close vicinity of urban area have more SHGs practising small business and villages situated far from the urban area have more SHGs which are mostly involved in livestock and agricultural livelihood.