MICROFINANCE, WOMEN EMPOWERMENT, BENEFITS AND SOCIAL CAPITAL FORMATION – A STUDY WITH REFERENCE TO URBAN BENGALURU

Abstract

Purpose : The main purpose of the present study is to know how far socio economic characteristics impact on micro finance initiatives, and to know about the benefits derived from the microfinance initiatives, factors driving social capital formation and women empowerment. Since independence poverty alleviation programmes through government sponsored schemes could not yield the expected result and in many cases the activities of welfare could not trickle down to the needy who are living in urban centres. Urban poor like rural poor also requires finance for the self consumption and involvement in income generating activities. Microfinance initiatives across the globe are popular as far as poverty alleviation, women empowerment and social capital formation. Bengaluru experienced rapid urbanisation due to increase in urban population from 12 million in 2020 to 12.7 in 2021. (http://www.microtredns.net>citation). Micro finance programmes emerged as a powerful tool of poverty alleviation since the last three decades and several studies have examined its economic influence on the community well being (Asghar Tahamasehi et al, 2021).

Methodology / Design : Questionnaires containing known questions which are open ended in nature are administered as schedule after considering avoiding non-response, delay and incompleteness in addition to respecting social distance norms. A total of 230 questionnaires in the hand and out of which 200 found to be useful forming 86.95 success rate. Chi-square, contingency co-efficient, Kendall’s co-efficient of concordance, and weighted arithmetic mean were performed for the purpose of analysis and presentation of data.

Key words : Poverty alleviation, savings, women empowerment, money lenders, living standards, education, awareness.