Women's Access to Credit and Rural Micro-finance in India

• The Training cum Production Centre
Approach: This approach is
unique, since it provides for loans of
raw materials rather than real money.
Poor women are organised into groups
of 5-10, which are then provided extensive
training in the specific processes
involved in any production activity.
The members are then issued
the raw material required for the particular
production process that they
are trained in. The value of the raw
material is credited to their name as
the loan amount.
• The Kosh NBFC Model: Sarva Jana
Seva Kosh Ltd. (Kosh) is a non-banking
financial company and is an example
of this kind of approach. It is
owned by the members of village
communities, which provides a variety
of financial services to a group
of people, otherwise untouched by
formal financial institutions. This
insitution provides support to the
Gram Sabha Nidhi foundations in
managing the rural communities’ financial
resources.
• The SHG Co-operative Model: Youth
Charitable Organisation (YCO), is a
non-profit rural development agency
based in Andhra Pradesh. This NGO
works with the poorest marginalised
rural families and promotes self-reliance
and self-help.. Programmes include
micro-finance, housing, income-generation,
water, sanitation,
agriculture, health, education, agroforestry
and waste-land management.
• The Federated Society Model: SIFFS
is a large network of fishermen’s
organisations and currently operates
in the states of Kerala and Tamil
Nadu and the Union Territory of
Pondicherry. It is to establish its operations
in Andhra Pradesh too. The
NGO has three core business areasfish
marketing, technology intervention
and credit delivery/facilitation
(linkages with banks). SIFFS establishes
bank linkages, enables fishermen
to tap external funds and directly
lends to members.
• The SECTION 25 NBFC
(Sanghamitra) Model: This is a new
model of micro-finance that attempts
to cater mainly to the needs in mature
SHGs. It is related to aspects of
scaling-up and sustainability. It lends
to mature SHGs with a good savings
and credit background. Loans are disbursed
in the form of cheques only
and repayment is also collected in the
form of cheques only. Consequently
SHGs and its members understand
and utilise banking mechanisms 14 .
Data is available about the status, organizational
working, operational functions,
performance and operational dynamics
of various MFIs in the country
in different forms.
One is through the institutions self-reporting
to various evaluatory and rating
organizations.
Two is through the documentation and
annual reports that the institutions maintain
for their own records.
Three is through the presentation of case
studies of the institutions and their successes
for different audiences.
14
For an analysis of the working of different models of MFI/NGOs, see, EDA Rural Systems 1996
The Vertical Approach to Data Issues: Institutional Mapping
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