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Self Help Groups as a tool for economic empowerment of people, from less privileged section of society, turned in a kind of Magic Wand. Success of Grameen Bank model developed by Mohammad Yunus, transformed people treated as untouchables by financial institutions in to bankable. Nations with sizeable portion of population from less privileged section, also adopt the same for their economic empowerment. The places which were remote and thus could have forced government agencies to take some time, found the helping hand of NGOs. Thus comparative evaluation of functioning of SHGs, enabled by DRDA vs NGOs; turned in to a topic worth study for scholars of Administrative Sciences. The comparison of governance has been based on attributes viz, participation, loans to start some economic enterprise to earn livelihood in sustained manner, thrift savings on regular basis, proper documentation of resolutions, loans advanced, repayment schedule; and enhanced socioeconomic empowerment of the group members etc. The study revealed that performance of SHGs having been nurtured by DRDA were far better and ahead on the attributes when compared against those being nurtured by NGOs.

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Saurabh Singh [27.09.1974] is Biz Consultant in addition to being Prof Biz Admn at GBPUAT Pantnagar. He worked for 6 yrs with corporates before joining academics. Dr Rajkamal Prof BizAdmn at MJPRU, Bareilly has 30yrs exp comprising academic and corporate, besides supervision of PhD research. Times of India gave him title of Man of Professional Ethos.

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