The search for reasons & solutions: A compendium of voices on the AP...
As India celebrates Diwali this week, the debate about how to deal with microfinance has calmed a bit. But since I wrote up my analysis of the root causes Andhra Pradesh showdown (part 1, part 2), the...
View ArticleAnd now all of a sudden it turns out -
… that lower interest rates were possible all along! India’s embattled microfinance industry has agreed to cap interest rates on its loans in southern Andhra Pradesh state at 24 per cent, as it seeks...
View ArticleAnd now this: GrameenLeaks??
In the past few weeks, I’ve been silent here about the microfinance crisis events in India. But why not let others do the talking? This blog published (what I think was) the first analysis of the A.P....
View ArticleThe “Why?” of Andhra Pradesh – An Interview with Malcolm Harper
In this interview, Professor Malcolm Harper analyses some of the underlying causes and consequences of the microfinance crisis in Andhra Pradesh. Professor Harper is chairman of the microfinance rating...
View ArticleThe Series Series (5): “State of the Sector” @ Microfinance In India
One of the things that make blogs particularly interesting are series. The “series” series recommends series at related blogs. This time, I introduce the “State of the Sector” series on the blog of the...
View ArticleBordercrossing Books: “Just Give Money to the Poor” by Hanlon, Barrientos and...
Joseph Hanlon, Armando Barrientos, David Hulme, 2010: Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South. Sterling: Kumarian Press. If it sounds novel to suggest that if you...
View ArticleThe Danger of Symbolism: Why the debate about “The Micro Debt” misses the point
The reactions to Tom Heinemann‘s controversial documentary “The Micro Debt” have mostly been strong. The film sheds light onto a number of questions, first and foremost the risk microcredit borrowers...
View ArticleMicrofinance displacing the state: private credit for public goods?
Practically everyone has heard the proverbial story of poor a Bangladeshi or Nigerian taking out a microloan to, say, buy a few chickens or start a small business selling mangoes, and becoming a...
View ArticleHow the Microfinance of Yesteryear accidentally created American Consumerism
I knew I was opening an interesting book when I picked up Lendol Calder’s „Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit”. But I had no idea that, in reading the historical...
View ArticleDrafting Foot Soldiers for the War on Poverty
This post is provided by guest blogger Domen Bajde, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Faculty of Economics (FELU) at the University of Ljubljana/Slovenia. He is also running a personal blog at...
View ArticleIndian Microfinance: The Stalemate is becoming unstable
Microfinance in India is still where it was months ago – in a stalemate with the government. The crisis of microcredit in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh which began last October with a...
View ArticleWhat’s wrong with Microfinance for Water? Well… A few Things
It’s great to know that people take note of the ideas we share on this blog. In April, I posted an entry introducing a paper I had recently presented in Croatia, called “Attempting the Production of...
View ArticleBordercrossing Books: “Microfinance and Its Discontents” by Lamia Karim
Lamia Karim, 2011: Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Microfinance has built a significant part of its reputation on the...
View ArticleThe Mothership of Microfinance Impact Studies has landed
A new systematic review of the evidence on microfinance, published last week, is dynamite for the world’s most popular development policy. Madeleine Bunting of the Guardian has already referred to it...
View ArticleFalse Histories: Microfinance and its non-Lineage of German Cooperative Banking
Recently, I’ve been writing a section about the history of microfinance for my dissertation. Having read around a bit, I feel the need to correct a myth that seems all too common among microfinance...
View ArticleThat evil evil Microcredit Documentary, on Tour
Few documentaries in the past years can claim to have had as much impact on transnational development as The Micro Debt. Tom Heinemann‘s documentary film, produced for Norwegian public broadcasting,...
View ArticleBordercrossing Books: “The Journey of Indian Micro-Finance” by Ramesh S....
Ramesh S. Arunachalam, 2011: The Journey of Indian Micro-Finance: Lessons for the Future. Chennai: Aapti Publications. The microfinance crisis in India which broke out in fall 2010, first imperiling...
View ArticleHow to Make Microfinance out as a Success, even when It Isn’t
CGAP is the World Bank’s (not-quite-so-)arm’s-length sub-organisation whose role is to promote microfinance. CGAP (“see-gap“) once stood for “Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest“, now it...
View ArticleHeresy or Opportunity? Book Review of “Confessions of a Microfinance Heretic”
This is a book review I wrote for the microfinance news site microDINERO about Hugh Sinclair’s controversial new insider/whistleblower account of the microfinance industry. Hugh Sinclair, 2012:...
View ArticleCharity, Games, Spectacle and Ideology
This post is provided by guest blogger Domen Bajde of the University of Southern Denmark. As evidenced by inventive movements and campaigns (for a future example see Half the Sky Movement: The Game),...
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