Microfinance and women’s empowerment in rural karnataka: a study of skdrdp’s shg model and its economic outcomes

Microfinance has emerged as an important tool to reduce poverty and empower women in rural India, particularly through projects like the Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project (SKDRDP). Basically, SKDRDP is a combination of microcredit and Self-Help Group (SHG), where women should get a confidence boost to actively participate in their communities. This study focused on examining the growth of SKDRDP's SHGs, the characteristics of the members who joined, the distribution of the loans by sector and the evolution of the total amount of credit. The studyhave taken a quantitative approach and extracted secondary data from the annual reports published by SKDRP and analysed the data using descriptive statistics, growth-rate calculation, and trend analysis using Excel and SPSS. The results were rather surprising: the growth of SHGs was 45-fold, and the number of members increased by 40-fold; more than 70% of loans are spent on small-scale industry and business. Loan amounts increased almost two-fold between the years 2017 and 2023, while savings in this period increased by 175%. All of this points to the fact that SKDRDP provides not just money but empowers women to make their own choices, become more self-sufficient, and actively participate in their community.