Published Paper Details:

India is a country where almost around 70 percent of its population lives in rural area and 60 percent depends on agriculture and so, micro-finance carries a great potential to play a major role in providing financial services to the poor and lower income individuals. Financial services like loans are provided to those who are parts of small businesses or micro-businesses to promote empowerment among the marginalised section of the society. Micro-finance is often regarded as a useful tool for socio-economic upliftment in a developing country like India with also the aim of improving financial inclusion. It is also expected to play a significant role in poverty alleviation and development. This study attempts to explore the much-debated questions which revolve around the role of microfinance institutions and its performance in the development of India through the use of secondary data collection. Micro finance programs are treated as a key strategy in addressing development issues across nations since the 1970s. Therefore, Microfinance institutions (MFIs) play a major role in strategies related to women empowerment and poverty alleviation. The various programmes under microfinance like self-help groups (SHGs) are promoted and inspired for their significant economic impacts on empowering people to promote entrepreneurship among them. This paper investigates the impact of microfinance access on three dimensions of women empowerment, which makes influence upon decision making on the issues of credit, expenditure, savings, etc. The paper is an attempt to address the question whether the Microfinance actually reaches to the root of poverty and improves the standard of living for the people who are considered to be the poorest of poor. This paper also analyses the growth and the outreach of these microfinance institutions in terms of economic development and growth.