Micro-Financing Rural Women Through Self-Help Groups: A Study on Income Generation and Decision-Making Skills

In most developing countries, the policies concerning rural credit were, by and large, based on certain assumptions, some of which were: commercial banks were reluctant to provide for the credit needs of the rural poor for reasons that were neither commercial nor economic; the rural poor did not have any capacity to save; they needed credit on concessionary rates of interest and relaxed terms for taking up income generating activities, more so for development works on their farms; the rural peop