A State of the Art of Self Help Groups in India

This paper considers the strategies of self help group for micro-enterprise development in rural areas. It seeks to answer the question of whether and under which conditions self help groups are an effective vehicle for organizing and representing local people in the development of community based micro-enterprises. Focusing particularly on examples from India in the context of food as a local resource, special attention is paid to success and failure factors of self help groups. While self help group strategies have been applied in the past as a blind replication of success models without considering the intricacies involved in group formation, success of self help groups is based on a thorough understanding of local conditions and possibilities to intervene

Self Help Groups and empowerment of women: Self-selection or actual benefits?

Evidence on success of SHGs in empowering females is mixed. In particular, researchers argue that such schemes often attract women who are already active in the public domain (referred to as ‘self-selection’), so that those who are most in need of assistance remain excluded. Simultaneously, the fact that a majority of the SHG members are already empowered leads to exaggerated estimates of the effects of the program (called ‘program effects’). This paper attempts to test the significance of the program effect of SHGs by comparing empowerment levels of newly inducted and older members of SHGs. The paper is based on a survey conducted in six municipalities in West Bengal, India.Empowerment; Self Help Groups; Non-parametric tests; Self-selection effect; India; Asia

Technological Self-Help and Equality in Cyberspace

New technologies challenge the law in many ways, for example, they extend one’s capacity to harm others and to defend oneself from harm by others. These changes require the law to decide whether we have legal rights to be free from those harms, and whether we may react against those harms extrajudicially through some form of self-help (e.g., self-defence or defence of third parties) or whether we must resort to legal mechanisms alone. These questions have been challenging to answer in the cyberspace context, where new interests and new harms have emerged. The legal limits on permissible self-defence have historically been a function of necessity and proportionality to the threat.However, this article argues that case law and historical commentary reveal that equality between individuals is also an important policy issue underlying the limits on self-defence. The use of technologies in self-defence brings the question of equality to the fore since technologies may sometimes neutralize an inequality in strength between an attacker and a defender. A legal approach that limits resort to technological tools in self-defence would ratify and preserve that inequality.However, the relationship between technology and human equality is complex, and this article proposes an analytical structure for understanding it. The objective is to understand which technologies promote equality while imposing the least social costs when used in self-defence. The article proposes principles (including explicit consideration of the effects on equality) for setting limits on technological self-help, and illustrates their use by applying them to several forms of cyberspace counter-strikes against hackers, phishers, spammers, and peer-to-peer networks.Les nouvelles technologies posent de nombreux défis en droit. À titre d’exemple, elles augmentent la capacité des individus d’infliger du mal à autrui, mais aussi leur capacité à se défendre du mal. Ces changements exigent du droit de décider si nous avons ou non le droit, juridiquement parlant, d’être à l’abri du mal. Le droit doit aussi décider si nous sommes libres de réagir au mal de façon extrajudiciaire, par l’entremise d’initiatives personnelles (par exemple, l’auto-défense ou la défense des tierces parties) ou si au contraire nous devons nous en tenir aux mécanismes juridiques. Ces questions posent un défi particulier dans le contexte du cyberespace, d’où émergent de nouvelles menaces et des intérêts nouveaux. Les limites juridiques de l’autodéfense permissible dépendent historiquement de la nécessité et de la proportionnalité de la réaction face à la menace.Cet article soutient toutefois que la jurisprudence et les commentaires historiques révèlent que l’égalité entre individus constitue aussi une question de politique importante qui sous-tend les limites de l’autodéfense. L’utilisation des technologies dans l’autodéfense porte donc au premier plan la question de l’égalité puisque la technologie peut parfois neutraliser une inégalité de force entre une personne qui attaque et une autre qui se défend. Une approche juridique qui limiterait l’utilisation d’outils technologiques dans l’autodéfense entérinerait et préserverait cette inégalité.Pourtant, la relation entre la technologie et l’égalité entre humains est complexe. Cet article propose une structure analytique pour mieux saisir cette relation. L’objectif est de comprendre quelles technologies favorisent l’égalité tout en imposant les coûts sociaux les moins élevés lorsqu’elles sont utilisées pour l’autodéfense. L’article propose des principes pour mettre en place certaines limites aux initiatives personnelles technologiques. L’article illustre aussi l’utilisation de ces principes en les appliquant à de nombreuses formes de riposte contre les pirates informatiques, les hammeçonneurs, les polluposteurs et les réseaux pair à pair. Enfin, l’article considère explicitement les effets de ces principes sur l’égalité

Moderators of Guided and Unguided Self-Help for Depression: The Role of Self-Regulation

Self-help interventions for depression have been used to help reduce the gap inthe need for treatment and the availability of resources. However, not everyone benefits from self-help and unguided self-help tends to have poorer treatment response and higher dropout than guided self-help. Nonetheless, some people still benefit from unguided self- help. Unguided self-help leans heavily on the individual to initiate and maintain change and those with self-regulation are more like to engage in change on their own. The purpose of this study was to understand the self-regulatory processes that may be used to stratify patients into guided and unguided interventions. Using theories of self-regulation, we proposed four self-regulatory processes that impact change, are known to be variable in depressive disorders, and might affect whom benefits from guided versus unguided self-help: autonomous motivation, goal specificity, response inhibition, and delay discounting. After enrolling 336 participants and included 184 in our primary analyses, we observed significant treatment effects of our two self-help groups. We did not observe a significant difference between our two experimental groups on any outcomes (e.g., treatment response, odds of completing, etc.). Significant interactions between these self- regulatory variables and our group term were seldom observed. Some self-regulatory processes did predict outcomes for our entire sample. Implications for future research are discussed

Patient-Centered Medicine and Self-Help Groups in Germany: Self-Help Friendliness as an Approach for Patient Involvement in Healthcare Institutions

Collaboration between laypersons and professionals is closely linked to the concept of patient centeredness. Patient centeredness means meeting the needs of individual patients as well as reacting to patients’ demands on the collective level. The support of self-help groups and their integration into healthcare institutions represent a major policy approach to fulfilling this requirement. Here, we first deal with the concept of patient centeredness in general, and the understanding of concept and use in Germany. We also provide a short definition of self-help friendliness (SHF) and discuss the success achieved in implementing it in Germany so far. We then clarify the closely related concepts of patient centeredness, patient participation and patient involvement SHF is seen as a strategy for increasing both patient centeredness and patient participation in healthcare services. We subsequently describe the involvement of self-help groups and patient associations in a series of empirical studies and practice-oriented projects carried out between 2004 and 2013. The last section contains a general discussion of the SHF approach as a means of systematically increasing sustainable patient centeredness and patient participation in healthcare services. Finally, we address the chances for future development in Germany and the transferability of SHF to other countries

THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL ON LOAN<br /> PAYMENT BEHAVIOUR COMMUNITY SELF HELP<br /> GROUP (CASE STUDY AT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT<br /> UNITINSTITUTEFORCOMMUNITYSELF-RELIANCE<br /> IN BLIMBING SUB DISTRICT MALANG CITY)

Abstract This study aims to examine the effect of social capital on the loan,payment behavior Community self help group in Blimbing Sub district Malang city. This type of research is survey .The population are members of community self help groups. The technique of sampling is simple random sampling. This study uses muitiple linear regression analysis. The analysis result showed that all the independent variable simultaneously has positive and significant effect on the dependent variable. Partially,networks has positive and significant effect on payment behavior. Trust has negative and no significant effect on payment behavior

Domestic Violence and the Politics of Self-Help

Self-help programs are conceptualized as alternatives to attorney representation that can help both courts and unrepresented litigants. The rhetoric of self-help also typically includes empowering unrepresented individuals to help themselves. But how do self-help programs respond to litigants’ efforts at self-advocacy? This Article reports findings from a study of courthouse self-help programs assisting unrepresented litigants applying for protection orders. The central finding is that self-help staff members were not neutral in the provision of services despite a professed ethic of neutrality. Using the sociological concept of demeanor, this Article shows that staff members rewarded protection order applicants who conformed to stereotypes about domestic violence victims and responded negatively to litigants who raised questions or sought assistance outside the scope of narrowly defined services. Staff members also failed to provide assistance with important economic remedies and de-prioritized safety planning and referrals to vital antiviolence services. In these and other ways, staff members influenced what relief was sought and by whom. This finding is especially troubling given the overarching goals of domestic violence protection orders to increase safety and empower low-income women, and has broad implications for studying access to justice and law and social movements. This Article also contributes to the analysis of demeanor by expanding previous typologies with the addition of two new categories: token supportive demeanor, and apathetic demeanor. These additions further account for how authority is displayed in legal settings, and how law is implemented through everyday interactions as well as formal decision-making

After the Gold Rush: The Boom of the Internet of Things, and the Busts of Data-Security and Privacy

This Article addresses the impact that the lack of oversight of the Internet of Things has on digital privacy. While the Internet of Things is but one vehicle for technological innovation, it has created a broad glimpse into domestic life, thus triggering several privacy issues that the law is attempting to keep pace with. What the Internet of Things can reveal is beyond the control of the individual, as it collects information about every practical aspect of an individual’s life, and provides essentially unfettered access into the mind of its users. This Article proposes that the federal government and the state governments bend toward consumer protection while creating a cogent and predictable body of law surrounding the Internet of Things. Through privacy-by-design or self-help, it is imperative that the Internet of Things—and any of its unforeseen progeny—develop with an eye toward safeguarding individual privacy while allowing technological development

The vulnerability of 'self-help' : women and microfinance in South India

Self-help groups (SHGs) play a major role in providing microfinance in India. But they do not work alone. State institutions are also a big part of the microfinance landscape. They promote and finance SHGs, and also interact directly with them. How does this kind of ‘institutionalised co-production’ in service delivery work in practice? My research shows that the relationships are not symmetrical. When they seek access to bank credit, women’s groups are in a dependent relationship, and are subject to, and tarnished by, the institutional imperatives, systemic corruption and political compulsions that shape the behaviour of rural development bureaucracies and banks. Part of the problem lies in a legacy of bank staff mistrusting borrowers due to arrears from previous credit granted under a different set of public schemes. Banks still try to recover old loans, and sometimes grant new loans to womens’ SHGs conditional on repayments by their male relatives. Women consider the ways in which bank officials assess credit-worthiness of SHGs as sometimes being discriminatory and suggestive of caste-profiling. Since banks, as institutions, are not very sensitive to the realities of their SHG borrowers, the quality of the relationship often depends on the attitude of the bank’s branchmanager. Success in accessing loans is often contingent on how SHGs, bank staff, government officers and non-government organisations collude to subvert the official objective of the loan programme – enterprise-promotion. Manufacturing evidence about non-existent enterprises involves substantial costs and risks for SHGs. Providing financial services in rural India is now a profitable venture and is attracting private financing institutions, including transnational banks. My research suggests that we need to enquire further into the power dynamics that underlie relationships between the poor people using the financial services and their providers. Keywords: Self help groups, microcredit, Tamil Nadu, co-production, gender, caste, banks, development bureaucracy, enterprise loans, policy subversion, corruption, power relations