Women constitute half of our population and play a vital role in the development of the family, the community and the nation. It has been widely recognized that unless women’s potential is properly developed,, no transformation and economic development is possible. Therefore, to accelerate the growth and prosperity of the nation, it is very important to create opportunities for socio- economic development of women in rural India. In fact, since independence, it has been felt that women experience poverty to a great extent than men do. The benefits of poverty eradication intervention programmes targeted towards the head of the household have failed to trickle down and reached the women. Since then, the Government of India (GOI) has been emphasizing the need for designing separate development programmes for women and to earmark a specific percentage for women beneficiaries in other rural development programmes. However, it was only in the year 1975, the year declared by the UN as International Year of the Women that the situation began to improve significantly. The Government of India’s policy on women development has undertaken various shift of emphasis independence. The most significant change occurred in the mid-1980s with the seventh Five Year Plan, which started a move towards equality and empowerment rather than development. This included the evolution of Department of Women and Child Development under the Ministry of Human Resource Development and its counterparts in the states. In addition, Women’s Development Corporations were set up in most states to implement the new strategy of economic development by facilitating access to training, entrepreneurship development, credit, technical consultancy services and marketing facilities. The Eighth Five Year Plan marks a further shift towards empowerment of women, emphasizing women as equal partners in the development process. The Government continued advocacy for sustained equitable growth opportunities for women in the subsequent five year pal ns including the Tenth Five Year Plan period which all are reflected below in its mandate. 1. Increased participation by women in local government and decision making process. 2. Greater spread of community- based organizations, including women’s group. 3. An increasing focus of poverty alleviation programmes for women; a mandate to eliminate discrimination against girl children and adolescents in matters of food, health, education, and child labour. 4. Recognition of the need to sensitize all levels of bureaucracy, legislators, and law enforcement agencies to gender issues. The promotion of income activities and thrift and credit through self help groups for women.