Skill Enhancement in Urban Areas through Self help Group: A Case Study of Cuttack City of Odisha

Self-help groups (SHGs) have emerged as a popular method of working with people in recent years. Since SHG based micro finance programmes cover a large number of women, it is expected that such programmes will have an important bearing on women’s empowerment. Self-Help Groups (SHGs) have emerged in order to help poor women to secure inputs like credit and other services. Micro finance and SHGs are effective in reducing poverty, empowering women, creating awareness and ensure sustainability of environment which finally results in sustainable development of the nation. Self-help groups have been instrumental in empowerment by enabling women to work together in collective agency. An effort is made in this paper to make a comparative analysis on the quality and performance of the SHGs and the impact of SHGs on women members in urban area. It is observed that due to fast growing SHG-bank linkage programmes in the State, the quality of SHG has come under stress. Some of the factors affecting the quality of SHGs are the target-oriented approach of the government in preparing group, inadequate incentive to NGO s for nurturing their groups etc.