Financing of Rural Women Entrepreneurs By RRBs in Karnataka (With Special Reference to Pragathi Krishna Gramina Bank)

Abstract

Financial Empowerment is the prime basic need to rural women entrepreneurs. Financial assistance is delivery of financial services like Bank Accounts, Savings Products, Remittances & Payment services, Insurance, Financial advisory services, Entrepreneurial credit, Micro finance and Micro Credit to the weaker section in rural areas, also not to ignore unemployed, Women, Old people, Physically challenged people etc at an affordable cost. Rural entrepreneurship implies entrepreneurship emerging in rural area. In other words, establishing industries in rural areas refers to the rural entrepreneurship. The government of India has defined women entrepreneurs as "an enterprise owned and controlled by women having a minimum financial interest of 51 per cent of the employment generated in the enterprise to women". Therefore Rural women entrepreneurship can be defined as any business or a concern established by a woman in rural area with 51 per cent stack in the business and providing 51 per cent employment to the rural women is called as rural women entrepreneurship". Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) can be seen as a unique experiment as well as experience in improving the efficacy of rural credit delivery mechanism in India. With joint shareholding by Central Government, the concerned State Government and the sponsoring bank in the proportion of 50:15:35, an effort was made to integrate commercial banking within the broad policy thrust towards social banking keeping in view the local peculiarities. Over the years, the RRBs, which are often viewed as the small man's bank, have taken deep roots and have become a sort of inseparable part of the rural credit structure . They have played a key role in rural institutional financing in terms of geographical coverage, and business volume as also contribution to development of the rural economy. This paper is directed towards understanding the financial assistance to rural women entrepreneurs; it also aims at analyzing the role of RRBs in achieving financial assistance. Risk.