Sustainability of Dairy-based Self Help Groups: An Analysis

A Self Help Group (SHG) is an informal homogeneous democratic group of 10-20 people joining together voluntarily to deal with common problems with an underlying philosophy of mutual help and collective wisdom. In India, the micro-credit schemes using SHGs were designed against the background of failure of the earlier rural development schemes. SHGs, which are instrumental in empowering rural poor, are adopting dairy farming is one of the important activities and significantly contributing in empowering the group members socially and economically. Various agencies are nurturing SHGs in Assam. Sustainability of these SHGs is mainly dependent on financial and organizational strength of the groups. On the above backdrops and keeping the importance of dairy-based SHGs in mind, the study is endeavoured to investigate the profile of dairy-based SHG members and to appraise the sustainability of these groups.