Introduction : enfolding the poor -- Entrepreneurship and work at the "bottom of the pyramid"--Social banking to financial inclusion -- The reluctant moneylender -- The domestication of microfinance -- Financial risk and the moral economy of credit -- Insured death, precarious life
This book discusses women-oriented microfinance initiatives in India and their articulation vis-à-vis state developmentalism and contemporary neo-liberal capitalism. It examines how these initiatives encourage economically disadvantaged rural women to make claims upon state-provided microcredit and connect with multiple state institutions and agencies, thereby reshaping their gendered identities. The author shows how Self-Help Group (SHG)-based microfinance institutions mobilise agency and create channels of empowerment for women as well as make them responsible for alleviating poverty for themselves and their families. The book also brings out the importance of factoring in women’s dissenting voices when they negotiate developmental projects at the grassroots level. Rich in empirical data, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, gender studies, economics, especially microeconomics, politics, public policy and governance.
In Making Women Pay, Smitha Radhakrishnan explores India's microfinance industry, which in the past two decades has come to saturate the everyday lives of women in the name of state-led efforts to promote financial inclusion and women's empowerment. Despite this favorable language, Radhakrishnan argues, microfinance in India does not provide a market-oriented development intervention, even though it may appear to help women borrowers. Rather, this commercial industry seeks to extract the maximum value from its customers through exploitative relationships that benefit especially class-privileged men. Through ethnography, interviews, and historical analysis, Radhakrishnan demonstrates how the unpaid and underpaid labor of marginalized women borrowers ensures both profitability and symbolic legitimacy for microfinance institutions, their employees, and their leaders. In doing so, she centralizes gender in the study of microfinance, reveals why most microfinance programs target women, and explores the exploitative implications of this targeting.
Discusses the role of the groups in encouraging rural women to become active in village affairs and benefits for the poorest. Examines the groups' financial management and financial performance. Considers implications for Indian microfinance and the global growth of the sector.
This book brings together empirical evidences and theoretical perspectives to provide a comprehensive overview of the microfinance sector in India. The essays in the volume: focus on the application of information and communication technology (ICT) solutions in microfinance institutions to strengthen the savings movement and widen credit access to the poor and marginalized sections of society; present case studies on self-help group (SHG) movements, federations and SHG-Bank Linkage programmes; propose measures for strengthening regulatory and governance structures of the microfinance sector; and identify linkages between overall financial inclusion and the contribution of microfinance institutions (MFIs). The volume will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of microeconomics, South Asian economics and development economics as well as professionals and aspirants in the microfinance, rural banking and financial inclusion sectors.
Microfinance India is a part of a series of annual reports on the microfinance sector in India which seeks to document developments, clarify issues, publicize studies, stimulate research, identify policy choices, generate understanding and enhance support for the sector. It is a comprehensive one-stop document that provides the latest data and a holistic view of the sector, combines analysis and description and integrates a variety of topics previously treated separately. The book highlights recent developments in Self Help Groups (SHGs) and SHG Bank Linkage Programs (SBLPs), and focuses on microfinance with regard to the investment scenario in India. It also deals with the burgeoning field of urban microfinance, developments in micro-insurance, and the impact of new technologies on the microfinance sector. Additionally, it recognizes the high demands which the state makes on microfinance institutions and discusses the need and relevance of new policy regulations. Complementing these analyses, statistical annexes provide essential data on the sector, strengthening its utility as a reference document. It contains extensive original material, and yet draws widely on the findings of other recent studies and reports, thereby emerging as a complete, detailed analysis of the status and the future of the microfinance sector in India.
Although 'doing good' is our innate nature, we often get lost in the complexities and view goodness as a distant dream. Making this dream of goodness a reality is often thwarted by thoughts surrounding sustainability. Thus, all good initiatives require a focus on sustainability and this has become one of greatest and most formidable challenges faced by any social enterprise. The book documents the understanding of the sustainability of one of the most celebrated forms of social enterprise of our times — Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) gained through a mixed-methods research investigation. It attempts to answer pertinent questions such as: What are the determinant and discriminating factors for the sustainability of MFIs in India? How are these factors being managed by the operationally efficient Indian MFIs that remained sustainable at reasonable interest rates before the onset of the crisis and ceilings imposition in Indian microfinance markets? What does the Indian microfinance crisis teach us about sustainability management and mismanagement? In a nutshell, the answers show that sustainability is a strategic issue that needs managerial attention and not a matter to be left to serendipity. At a time when the industry is recovering from the adverse effects of a crisis and when there are still contentions as to whether the rate fixed by the regulator is enough for the sustenance of the MFIs, the findings mentioned in the book revive the lost hope for the Indian microfinance industry. By deciphering the strategies used by efficient and sustainable MFIs and discussing the lessons that the crisis has imparted to the Indian microfinance markets, this book will enable Indian MFIs to march towards efficient and sustainable operations without losing focus on their clients.
Microfinance is the business of giving small, collateral-free loans to poor borrowers that are paid back in frequent intervals with interest. While these for-profit microfinance institutions (MFIs) promise social and economic empowerment, they have mainly succeeded at enfolding the poor—especially women—into the vast circuits of global finance. Financializing Poverty ethnographically examines how the emergence of MFIs has allowed financial institutions in the city of Kolkata, India, to capitalize on the poverty of its residents. This book reveals how MFIs have restructured debt relationships in new ways. On the one hand, they have opened access to new streams of credit. However, as the network of finance increasingly incorporates the poor, the "inclusive" dimensions of microfinance are continuously met with rigid forms of credit risk management that reproduce the very inequality the loans are meant to alleviate. Moreover, despite being collateral-free loans, the use of life insurance to manage the high mortality rates of poor borrowers has led to the collateralization of life itself. Thus the newfound ability of the poor to use MFI loans has entrapped them in a system dependent not only on their circulation of capital, but on the poverty that threatens their lives.
"This book is an exhaustive handbook on microfinance covering more than 600 concepts and ideas .Since poverty alleviation remains a top agenda for development programs and microfinance has proved the most effective approach for combating it, there was a growing demand among students, academics, journalists, bankers and general readers for a handy companion on microfinance. The text examines what has become a vast global industry employing hundreds of thousands of people and attracting the attention of large numbers of governments, banks, aid agencies, non-governmental organizations and consultancy firms. In this book the authors try to help students, who are relatively new to microfinance, practitioners looking for an entry point into the vast academic literature, and policy makers to become acquainted with the main ideas and debates about microfinance. The main objective of the book is to equip the reader with sound understanding of the various concepts in microfinance and their relevance to contemporary financial programmes so that the user is in a position to process business proposals in microfinance. "