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Being recognized as one of the largest democratic country and having the third largest technical and scientific manpower in the world, India has been taking initiatives to optimize its human resources for attaining the growth in its economy. Women constitute a valuable section of our population and using the full potentials of this section is a challenging task and needs a comprehensive planning and development. Women have been participating actively in all areas of production irrespective of due recognition and remuneration to their contribution. Their participation has been confined to areas demanding low skills and low wages with inadequate scope for upward mobility. Illiteracy and inadequate access to training and resources are considered as major impediments to the better status to the women. Herculean efforts are to be made to ensure that all women become literate and are able to participate in developmental activities. Women are to be viewed as direct beneficiaries, participants and target groups and execute various programmes to attain the implied objectives of women development and women empowerment. To combat the poverty in the rural areas, particularly among the women, the planners and the policy makers have to invariably focus on women development and women empowerment. Women should progress in all fields of education, employment, production and regard them as agents for development. The purpose of any women-oriented programme should be to attain horizontal growth in the status of women. Women should be made empowered so that they possess capacity to direct their life towards desired social,political and economic goals or status. Through empowerment process, the women can challenge the traditional power equations and relations, participate in policy and decision making process at domestic and public levels, and come out of gender-based discrimination in all structures of the society. A woman is said to be economically empowered when she gains Power as a result of increased access to economical resources. The means of achieving economic empowerment are: increase in income, access to finance, to make decisions regarding the utilization of money or credit, etc,. The men ability Micro Finance concept has attracted many policy makers to empower women and alleviate poverty simultaneously. It is being followed in many countries, in India, since last two decades. Micro Finance refers to provision of credit and other financial services and products of very small amounts to thrift, the poor in rural and semi-urban areas for enabling them to raise their income levels and improve living standards. It refers to the entire range of financial and non-financial services, including skill up gradation and entrepreneurship development, rendered to the poor for enabling them to overcome poverty. The planners have made all-round development of women as one of the focal points of planning process in our country. Various women development programmes were initiated in almost each and every Five Year plan. Establishment of Central Social Boards, organization of Mahila Mandals, launching of Community Development Programmes, imparting training for skill up gradation, protection and development of women and children, launching of relief and rehabilitation for women, implementation of health, nutrition and education programmes, etc., were the initiatives made by the government during various previous Five Year Plans period, starting from 1951 to till date. Due to social, religious and cultural problems or ethnic traditions, women development has become a distant mirage and more over oppression of women is a common phenomenon that is seen everywhere. The basic issue that prevents women from playing full participatory role in nation building is the lack of economic independence. Planners and policy makers have searched for certain alternatives and identified that the Self-Help Group Programmes will pave the way for women development and women empowerment. PRESENT STUDY The present study deals with economic empowerment of women through self-help groups in drought prone district of Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has taken up women's empowerment as one of the main agenda items to tackle poverty through SHG mechanism. It has drawn up a long term action plan for women's empowerment through SHG programmes focusing on organizing women in different groups to undertake certain productive activities to earn theirlivelihood and develop themselves in al! walks of life. Gone are the days the women had accepted their poverty and miseries as due to divine fate or destiny and had little hope for improving their lot in life The Government is now looking at initiating more and more credit programmes and schemes with an integrated approach for economic development of women, leaving the welfare approach as traditional and fragmented one. SHG movement has been taken up as a mass movement in the state of Andhra Pradesh and SHGs are considered as the most significant tools to adopt a participatory approach for the economic development. To promote savings and gainful employment and to create a forum to support each other, women required to participate in SHG Programmes. Women should unite themselves into social groups called self help groups for their own prOgress as well as that of the community.

Indian Council of Social Science Research.

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