MICRO ENTERPRISES CAN PLAY A CRUCIAL ROLE IN ALLEVIATION OF RURAL POVERTY

Helping the poor escape poverty is easier by way of investing in the entrepreneurial spirit of the poor themselves, providing them with the tools to participate in the marketplace and work their way to a better life. The issue of poverty can be addressed either through Social Programmes or enabling participation of affected persons in economic activity. Social Programmes or agenda include doling out money, fully subsidizing education, creating awareness or even programmes like ?food Security?, etc. while ?social agenda? would certainly address the problem, but only the immediate one, the long term solution remains elusive. Therefore, enabling poverty afflicted persons to establish an income generating activity can have a long term outcome. Acting on such belief, several countries have instituted specific programmes to promote enterprise development as a solution to the problem of poverty, which have yielded some results, but still have a long way to go before poverty is fully eradicated.In our country. several programmes such as, Prime Minister?s Rojgar Yojna, Swarna Jayanti Gram/Sahri Rojgar Yojna, National Programme for Rural Industrialization, Rural Employment Generation Programme, Swayamsidha have facilitated establishment of micro enterprises. Consequently, today India has 44.35 million enterprises (according to NSSO data) employing almost 80 million workers. The challenge is to use this talent pool to further consolidate the achievement in poverty alleviation. More than 25 million enterprises could be supported, promoted to ensure their long-term survival and ultimately bring them into the mainstream of the economy if appropriate policies and procedures are set in place. The present paper tries to explore the challenges which the micro enterprises face and the best approach and principles which may be adopted to overcome these challenges and to ensure that micro enterprises lead to their expected outcome of poverty reduction.