Micro enterprise and Women Empowerment- A study of Badarpur Development Block of Karimganj District (Assam, India)

The empowerment of women is crucial to the process of development of any community. Though women constitute almost half of our population and play a vital role in every sphere of life, their importance is not properly recognized by the society. They are generally suppressed and enjoy limited access to different fields of life, such as, education, society, culture, politics, business and so on. But a nation can not achieve all round development if women are not given equal opportunity of development with their male counterparts. A society moves when women move. Thus, the social status of women is a reliable indicator to assess the development of the society. It can be said that status of women is intimately connected with their economic position, which in turn depends on opportunities to participate in economic activities. SHGs provide women an avenue to participate in economic activities. It gives women an easy access to credit. The members of SHG meet regularly and save an amount of money in a joint account of the group which can be used as a revolving fund to provide credit for the consumption and production purposes. Sometimes, Bank also gives loans with minimum interest to these groups and as a result the SHG members can take money from that Bank loan at very low interest rate which in turn helps women to establish microenterprises and meet the crisis situations. The present paper aims to study the relationship between micro enterprise and women empowerment in Badarpur Development Block of Karimganj District.