This study examines how far women self-help groups model of development has helped empower women and whether formal and informal institutions relating to state, market and civil society have become inclusive of poor women due to women self-help groups model of development. The authors articulate that extreme poverty and widespread inequality between men and women are the main impediments to democracy and development. Further, this study suggests that as gender equality is an important factor in the development process, empowerment of women may address this issue to some extent. To sum it up, among all the women-based group models of poverty alleviation, the Self-Help Groups (SHGs) are promoted as basic entities and are federated to tackle higher order functions.

The modernization and Marxist theories shared a common ground on the link between democracy and development during the 1960s and 1970s. The modernization theory contends that democracy corresponds with the capitalist development, which promotes features like structural differentiation, secularism bureaucratization, urbanization and individualism.

In the Marxist and neo-Marxist theory, the economy was considered as the sub-structure of society, which determines the superstructure that includes the polity. Since the 1980s, the emphasis on the linkage between democracy and development shifted to the object and purpose of democracy. The new debate centers on whether democracy is the cause and major facilitator of economic development. There is also a consensus that democracy and development are complementary and reinforce each other. History shows cases where democracy and development are dissociated and have resulted in failure (Ghali et al. 2003).

Can Micro Initiatives Strengthen Links Among Gender, Development and Democracy: Empirical Evidence from the State of Andhra Pradesh, development, democracy, Marxist, modernization, poverty, society, consensus, contends, economic, gender, impediments, linkage, neoMarxist, polity, reinforce, secularism, structural, urbanization.