Group formation and group activities are the foremost step for the success of such programmes. Self Help Groups (SHGs) is a homogenous group of people consisting of 10-15 members having almost same socio-economic and political background. The main motive behind the formation of Self Help Group is to uplift the saving habit of members by keeping a certain amount of money within the group. And from this accumulated money the members themselves can make internal thrift on their personal demand. Moreover the interest charged for the thrift is also very low which is distributed among the members itself. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) started a programme called the Self Help Group -bank linkage programme on a pilot basis in the year 1992 for extending credit to group of people without any collateral and without any specific project so that the group may utilize the amount for on-lending to its members. The programme essentially consisted of formation of groups of around 10 to 20 persons and the members are to be self-selected to have trust on each other and have affinity to work together for mutual benefits. The groups should save money by contributing a small amount every week to build up its own corpus fund. The groups are to be credit linked by sanctioning cash credit limit usually two to three times of their savings after six to …show more content…
of Self Help Groups(in lakh)
Northern 3.65
North Eastern 3.16
Central 6.85
Western 8.96
Eastern 14.68
Southern 36.96
All India 74.26
Source: NABARD
Table 3 depicts the all India and Regional Trend of number of Self Help Groups as on 31st March, 2014. Maintaining the trend, the Southern region leads the chart with the maximum number of Self Help Groups. The Southern region has about 36.96lakh Self Help Groups and accounts for around 49% of total Self Help Groups. Eastern region is a distant second with 14.68lakh Self Help Groups followed by the Western, Central, Northern and Northeast regions respectively.
TABLE 4: SAVINGS OF SELF HELP GROUPS WITH BANKS (as on 31 march 2014)
Bank Savings of Self HGs(in lakh)
Commercial Banks 663145
Regional Rural Banks 195985
Cooperative Banks 130610
Total 989741
Source: NABARD
Table 4 depicts the savings of Self Help Groups as on 31 March 2014 with Banks viz. Commercial Banks, Regional Rural Banks and Cooperative Banks. Commercial banks continue to play a leading role, serving as a savings institution for 54% of total Self Help Groups and accounting for 67% of the total savings by Self Help Groups in the banking system. Regional Rural Banks are distant second, followed by Cooperative Banks with 20% and 13% of savings