QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF SOME SELECTED SELF HELP GROUPS IN ASSAM

The proliferation of SHG and target approach in the formation of Self Help Groups (SHG) has posed a serious challenge to sustain Self Help Group movement by maintaining quality of SHGs and hence, the quality assessment of SHGs is now being considered as a key concern. Several rating systems for micro-finance interventions and SHGs have been developed in the past. But there lacks uniformity about the norms of quality assessment. Social, empowerment and behavioural aspects of SHG functioning rarely found a place in the rating system. The present study differs from earlier studies as it covers descriptive study on quality assessment of SHGs in a separate way covering twenty nine parameters of quality assessment of Self Help Groups. The study is conducted in three development blocks of Nagaon Districts of Assam during 2010-11. It is observed that due to fast growing of the SHG-bank linkage programme, 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. Further, in this paper a modest effort is also given to study the performance of some selected SHGs in the study area.