Abstract

Women empowerment and economic development are closely related, and through various schemes the Government of India is continuously making efforts to empower women since independence. However, over the years there has been a remarkable shift from welfare to development oriented approach by becoming more responsive to the need of poor women for earning incomes by making relatively small investments. Accordingly, Government of India launched Pradhan Mantry Mudra Yojana (PMMY) on April 8, 2015 to fund the unfunded who intended to contribute to the economy but still left to get the benefit of easy access to the credit. The PMMY scheme envisages extending affordable credit up to Rs. 10 lakh for non-farming income and employment generating activities. The loan scheme has been grouped in three products of Shishu (covering loans up to Rs. 50,000/-), Kishore (loan more than Rs. 50,000 and up to 5.0 lakh), and Tarun (above 5.0 lakh and up to 10.0 lakh) to signify the stage of growth/development and funding needs of the beneficiary micro-entrepreneurs. The unique feature of the scheme is that almost three-fourth account holders are women. The scheme has completed four years of its existence and supported 17.68 crore micro-entrepreneurs with a total loan of Rs. 854,249 crores. Thus, a study was made to assess the effectiveness of the Scheme in achieving its objective of empowering women in employment generating activities.   The study found that the Pradhan Mantry Mudra Yojana (PMMY) is a unique initiative which pins hopes on the skill and strength of the poor, neo-middle and middle class to create an inclusive, sustainable and value based entrepreneurial culture in achieving economic success and financial security for weaker section of the society including women.  Although, 73.6% beneficiaries of the scheme were women but their share to disbursed loan amount was just 43.5%. The average amount of Rs. 26,747 disbursed to women entrepreneurs appears insufficient to begin a viable micro-enterprise and empower women. The numbers of large size loans or disbursement that exceeds Rs. 5.0 lakh and can generate employment among women were less than 0.2%. Thus, the objective of women empowerment under PMMY could only be achieved if more Tarun loans of more than Rs. 5.0 lakh are promoted among the women entrepreneurs after devising an inbuilt mechanism of skill development training and mentoring of women under Mudra Yojana.