National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi-110016, India
1Department of Human Development and Family Studies, College of Home Science GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar-263145, Uttarakhand, India
Self-help groups (SHGs) as clients are financial intermediaries owned by the poor. They usually start by making voluntary thrift on a regular, mostly fortnightly or monthly basis (contractual savings). They use this pooled resource together with the external bank loan to provide interest bearing loans to their members. SHGs represent a unique approach to financial intermediation. The present investigation was taken up with the objective of studying the banking behavior of SHG women in Ghajipur district of Uttar Pradesh and Udham Singh Nagar district of Uttarakhand. The leading banks viz Union Bank of India and Bank of Baroda from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand respectively were taken under the study. Ten SHGs associated with these banks from each locale were selected purposively and five members from each SHG were selected randomly for the purpose of study. Exploratory research was done taking total sample of 100 respondents, 50 from each locale. A pilot study was done on the selected locale based on which the interview schedule was formulated and was used to collect the relevant information. The results revealed that majority of SHG women lacked appropriate banking behavior. They needed support while banking and could not perform banking activities independently. They needed to be trained on various aspects of banking so that they could manage the funds properly.
Self-help group, microfinance, credit, linkage, banks
