-AP The microfinance industry pursued a path of rapid business growth in recent years; two investigations now link it to debtor suicides   First they were stripped of their utensils, furniture, mobile phones, television sets, ration cards and heirloom gold jewellery. Then, some of them drank pesticide. One woman threw herself into a pond. Another jumped into a well with her children. Sometimes, the debt collectors watched nearby. More than 200 poor, debt-ridden residents of...

Muhammad Yunus, the economist who founded Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, visited Mumbai recently where he spoke to India Ink about his vision of “social businesses,” his forced departure from Grameen and the recent controversies that have dogged micro-finance in India and elsewhere. An edited, condensed version of the interview follows: Q. The microfinance industry has gone through an existential crisis in the last few years. Why did the industry fall from grace? A. See,...

Neglected by conventional banks, low-income women in Satara have set one up themselves. Not long after Chetna Gala Sinha came to the drought-stricken region of Mhaswad in western Maharashtra to marry a farmer and prominent local social activist, she began putting her university degree in finance into action. Local women, she observed, were wearing themselves out in subsistence livelihood such as growing grapes or selling vegetables. In 1992, Chetna, who grew up...

Lack of adequate credit - the lifeblood for any company is threatening to derail fledgling attempts by hundreds of dalit entrepreneurs to overcome deep socio-economic barriers and break into mainstream business.  Without credit, such entrepreneurs would also struggle to cash-in on the Rs 7,000-crore business opportunity opened up by the central government's new dalit-friendly sourcing plan, unveiled last month.  Credit disbursements to dalit entrepreneurs through 20-odd schemes run by the Ministry of...

-The Telegraph   RBI governor D. Subbarao has expressed concern over Bengal’s low credit-deposit ratio, which means that funds from the cash-starved state are actually meeting the borrowing needs elsewhere. The erstwhile Left government used to blame banks for the skewed ratio. But bankers have blamed it on the poor credit absorption capacity of rural Bengal because of fragmented land holdings — a fallout of the land reforms. After a meeting with chief minister...