Purpose The purpose of this paper is to question and analyse the basic tenets of financial inclusion and to understand the relationship between access to finance and poverty reduction. The paper attempts to elaborate the importance of unrestrained access to finance in building an inclusive financial sector, which is believed to reduce poverty by enabling poor and excluded people to participate in the economic process by employing their skill sets, labour and innovations in the productive activities of the economy, thereby not only increasing their own welfare and standards of living but also contributing at very high marginal returns to the overall economic growth. Design/methodology/approach This study evaluates the progression of the participants/beneficiaries of National Rural Livelihood Mission Scheme (erstwhile Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana Scheme) across various dimensions of poverty by making use of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). Findings The results suggest that the participation has in fact lead to increase in the standard of living, thereby reducing multidimensional poverty. Further, the results suggest that participation does not reduce deprivations in the “education” dimension, whereas in all other dimensions reduction in deprivations is significant. The results also suggest that the programme under study seems to be seriously mistargeting by allocating the programme to non-poor sections rather than absolute poor. Research limitations/implications The study has been conducted without following the participants over a longer period of time. The study has adopted a pre-post methodology, collecting the responses at only one point using a reflexive quasi-experimental design which leads to a recall limitation. Originality/value The paper tries to evaluate the impact of access to financial inclusion through a new perspective – the MPI. The paper examines the targeting of government-sponsored programmes and the utility of such intervention in the changing milieu of financial services.

PurposeThis study investigates the effectiveness of microfinance-backed entrepreneurship as a mechanism for the holistic empowerment of women.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a mixed-method research-design consisting of quasi-experimental design (quantitative approach) involving women, both entrepreneurs (132) and non-entrepreneurs (238), as well as in-depth semi-structured interviews (qualitative approach).FindingsQuantitative analysis revealed that female entrepreneurs are better off than female non-entrepreneurs in terms of economic, social, political and psychological indicators of empowerment. However, relatively lesser impact was found in terms of political, and to an even smaller extent, social empowerment of women. Analysis of in-depth interviews corroborated these findings confirming that entrepreneurship serves as an effective tool for the holistic empowerment of women. However, non-entrepreneurs also exhibit social empowerment.Research limitations/implicationsGiven the restricted geographical ambit of the study, prudence ought to be exercised in drawing inferences applied to alternate contexts. That the vast majority of questionnaire respondents are illiterate presented a notable impediment in the process of collection of accurate responses.Practical implicationsMicrofinance intervention ought to be specifically directed to cultivating entrepreneurship among women; in particular, to achieve the full benefits of empowerment, women availing microfinance ought to exert full control over their own business ventures.Originality/valueIn analyzing holistic empowerment through microfinance supported businesses set up by women, the study adds to the existing literature on women entrepreneurship and empowerment.

The present study attempts to examine the impact of microfinance on certain dimensions of women empowerment, namely economic, social, political and psychological. Quasi-experimental design comprising of control group (180) and treatment group (190) has been employed to assess the impact of microfinance on women empowerment. The findings revealed positively significant but moderate level of impact of microfinance on economic, political and psychological dimensions of women empowerment and only smaller overall impact on social empowerment. In addition, case studies further supported microfinance programme has substantially empowered women in terms of economic, political, social and psychological dimensions. More importantly, ambiguity over social empowerment was cleared.

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