Poverty reduction through women's entrepreneurial activities in rural Andhra Pradesh, India
In India, ensuring sustainable livelihoods and alleviating rural poverty remain serious challenges for policy makers. There are many problems including a lack of access to institutional/farm credit, lack of innovative approach for agricultural development, steep increases in the prices of fertilizer, high indebtedness, and imperfect market conditions. The lack of institutional support often traps the poor into a cycle of perpetual debt and poverty, and in extreme conditions, they may not even have access to food. In these circumstances, ensuring livelihood security for the poor through the promotion of various small scale entrepreneurial activities has received critical attention. Rural banks have been entrusted with the responsibility to provide adequate and affordable credits to rural people to improve their livelihood opportunities. Self Help Groups (SHGs) have become instrumental in delivering tiny loans to the poor women through banks to promote various entrepreneurial activities. Particularly in Andhra Pradesh, a southern state, the SHG movement has been playing a pivotal role by bringing a radical change in the position of women from daily wage laborer to self employed entrepreneur. As an empirical analysis, this paper critically examines the potentials of SHGs to emerge as institutions of rural entrepreneurship, and of running various small scale business ventures by poor women in Andhra Pradesh. Besides, the paper attempts to highlight the major operational challenges in the functioning of SHGs.