Beyond Micro-credit: Putting Development Back Into Micro-financeThomas Fisher, M. S. Sriram Oxfam, 2002 - 390 pages Micro-finance is an instrument for development. However, the developmental purposes of microfinance are often lost behind the dominant focus on the technology and management of micro-finance, or on outreach to poor clients. This book challenges the microfinance industry to go beyond such a narrow focus, looking at the range of development goals for which microfinance can be used. These include not only poverty alleviation through providing savings, credit, and insurance, but also promoting livelihoods, empowering women, building people's organizations, and changing institutions. The book richly illustrates each of these from actual micro-finance practice and explores the organizational challenges of combining such development goals with financial service-provision. The book is based on the great diversity of microfinance practice in India, which has developed numerous innovations, from new products for promoting livelihoods to democratic governance. The book provides the most comprehensive analysis available of Indian innovation and practice in microfinance, including detailed analysis of the "self-help groups" in India, comparisons with microfinance in Bangladesh, and the latest performance and impact assessment. |
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achieve activities Ahmedabad Andhra Pradesh areas assets Bangladesh BASIX borrowers building capacity-building cent challenges Chapter clients context costs credit cooperatives credit groups crore democratic deposits developmental economic effective emerging empower empowerment enable enhance ensure enterprises example federation financial sector financial services focus funds Grameen Bank Grameen groups Grameen system impact income initiative innovation inputs institutions investment Jharkhand large number lending linkages livelihood promotion loans M-CRIL mainstream meetings ment micro micro-credit micro-enterprise micro-finance organisations micro-finance sector micro-financial services million mobilisation MYRADA NABARD NBFCs NGOs operations performance poor households portfolio potential poverty practice PRADAN programme promoting SHGs range recognise repayment role rural Sa-Dhan savings and credit Self-employed Women's Association self-help groups SEWA Bank Sharan SHG system significant social entrepreneur staff strategy sustainability Tamil Nadu tion tives urban village wider women Women's World Banking
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Page 138 - the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction...
Page 15 - USA United States of America USAID United States Agency for International Development USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics VAT value added tax Ven.
Page 152 - VALUES AND RELEVANT UNCERTAINTY What becomes precarious under type 4 conditions is how organizational stability can be achieved. In these environments individual organizations, however large, cannot expect to adapt successfully simply through their own direct actions— as is evident in the case of the NFU Nevertheless, there are some indications of a solution that may have the same general significance for these environments as have strategy and operations for types 2 and 3. This is the emergence...
Page 152 - This is the emergence of values that have overriding significance for all members of the field. Social values are here regarded as coping mechanisms that make it possible to deal with persisting areas of relevant uncertainty. Unable to trace out the consequences of their actions as these are amplified and resonated through their extended social fields, men in all societies have sought rules...
Page 138 - Institutions are a set of rules, compliance procedures, and moral and ethical behavioral norms designed to constrain the behavior of individuals in the interests of maximizing the wealth or utility of principals...
Page 296 - This programme was coordinated by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, in partnership with research institutions in Bosnia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Uganda.
Page 389 - Foreword The Centre for Management in Agriculture at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, is actively involved in conducting research on topics of management of agriculture and on rural development activities.
Page 223 - In fact, the real tasks of management are to devise and discover markets, to evaluate products and product techniques, and to manage actively the actions of employees; these are all tasks in which there is uncertainty and in which investment in information must be acquired (North 1990: 77) This process is entrepreneurial in character.
Page 16 - The project would not have been possible without the generous support of the Ford Foundation.
Page 150 - Complex societies in fast-changing environments give rise to sets or systems of problems (meta-problems) rather than discrete problems. These are beyond the capacity of single organizations to meet. Inter-organizational collaboration is required by groups of organizations at what is called the "domain