WOMEN-LED SELF-HELP GROUPS AND SUSTAINABLE RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN KARNATAKA: A COMPOSITE-INDEX AND SECONDARY-DATA ANALYSIS

Nagendra N

doi:10.29121/ShodhPrabandhan.v3.i1.2026.103

Authors

Nagendra N Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Government First Grade College, Udayapura, Hassan District, Karnataka - 573225, India Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29121/ShodhPrabandhan.v3.i1.2026.103

Keywords:

Women Empowerment, Self-Help Groups, Rural Development, Karnataka, Financial Literacy, Composite Index, Collective Action

Abstract

Women-led self-help groups (SHGs) are widely used to advance financial inclusion and community development in rural India, but programme assessment still relies heavily on outreach, savings and credit indicators. This study introduces a transparent Women’s Empowerment and Rural Development Index (WERDI) for Karnataka that integrates five domains: economic agency, household decision-making, social mobility, digital-financial access and collective leadership. The index is developed from secondary evidence and explicitly identified analytical benchmark values rather than from a new household survey. Under equal domain weights, the baseline WERDI is 62.8. Household decision-making records the highest domain score, whereas collective leadership records the lowest. A coordinated scenario that improves digital access, market-linked economic agency and collective leadership raises WERDI to 68.0, a gain of 5.2 points (8.28%). Sensitivity analysis shows that the overall result remains within a narrow range under alternative policy weights, while a leadership-centred specification reveals the principal institutional constraint. The contribution of the study lies in an auditable index structure, reproducible equations and a policy-oriented decomposition of marginal gains. The framework shifts evaluation from counting groups and loans toward measuring control over income, enterprise continuity, digital capability, institutional voice and convergence with cooperatives and local governance.

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