Participation trend of SC/ST women beneficiaries in selected development programmes

Abstract

The Social Welfare department in 2001 introduced number of schemes and programmes to improve the standardsof living and to empower the rural people particularly SC/ST women section. Among many programmes, few programmeslike Self Employment Programme (SEP), Micro Credit Scheme (MCS) and Land Purchasing Scheme (LPS) were selected forthe present study depending on the availability of women beneficiaries. The present study was undertaken during the year2018-19 from University of Agriculture Sciences, Dharwad to know the participation of SC/ST women in social welfaredevelopment programmes. The study was conducted in three districts of Karnataka state viz., Dharwad, Gadag andBelagavi. From each district, two talukas and based on the availability of women beneficiaries for the social welfareprogramme a total twenty villages were selected purposively. A total of 450 women beneficiaries of SEP (200), MCS (200)and LPS (50) were randomly selected. Ex-post facto research design used to conduct the research. The results indicated that,high level of participation was observed in all three selected programmes i.e SEP (90.50 %), MCS (78.50 %) and LPS(56.00 %). The overall participation index in SEP programme was to the extent of 76.76 per cent, in MCS programme it wasto the extent of 77.30 per cent and in LPS programme it was found to the extent of 66.14 per cent. Relationship betweenparticipation and development programmes indicated that in SEP and MCS programme education was positively andsignificantly correlated at 1 % level. With regard to regression, the most contributing variables for predicting the participationabout development programme in SEP and MCS programmes were education and age both were significant predictors. Incase of LPS programme age was a predicting factor.