Shifting Trajectories in Microfinance Discourse

Author(s): K. Kalpana
Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 40, No. 51 (Dec. 17-23, 2005), pp. 5400-5401+54035409
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
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Special

articles

in
Shifting Trajectories
Discourse
Microfinance
Microfinance was earlier viewed as a "silver bullet" that could pull poorer
householdsout of poverty. Since the 1990s, the approach has been more cautious
emphasisingthe "protectional"aspects as opposedto the "promotional"dimensionsof
microfinance. A defining feature of the micro-credit scenario in India, as opposed to

the Bangladeshi experience, has been the significant role played by public sector

formal lending institutions in the establishment and expansion of financial intermediation

through self-help groups. Today, the SHG-bank linkage programme is arguably the world's
largest microfinance programme in terms of outreach. In the light of issues and concerns
raised by research on the Bangladesh microfinance experience, this paper asks whether
these could adequately serve as a lens through which Indian SHG-based microfinance

could be critically examined, given the crucial organisational and institutional

differencesbetween Indian and Bangladeshi microfinance.
K KALPANA
I

Introduction
W

orldwide, development practitioners and policymakers are viewing with interest the explosion of
microfinance service reach to poor households. These
are mainly through neighbourhood based groups that encourage
members to make small and regular savings circulated as lowinterest loans and that tap into peer pressure and community
control to generate high repayment rates. Inspired by the innovative efforts of pioneers in the Bangladeshi non-governmental
sector, notably the Grameen Bank and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), this model of financial services
delivery has grown as an important component of development
interventions advocated by powerful donor agencies such as the
World Bank, USAID, IFAD and UNDP. The establishment of
the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP) in 1995
as a multi-donor consortium by nine founding members,
including the World Bank, with the mandate to provide
financial and technical support to microcredit programmes
worldwide, is a reflection of the massive global drive behind the
microcredit movement. The consensus at the Microcredit
Summit in 1997 to extend credit assistance to 100 million of the
world's poorest families by the year 2005 most pbwerfully expresses the "microcredit/micro-enterpriseas panacea" vision for
structuralproblemsof povertyandunderdevelopment[Microcredit
Summit 1997].
The paper attempts to analyse the shifting contours of the
conceptualisationof microcredit/financeI as a poverty alleviation
strategy within the dominant development discourse over the
1990s and what it entails for the practice of Indian SHG-based
microfinance. In particular,it attempts to trace the paradigmshift
away from an earlier conviction in the presumed ability of
5400

microfinance to function as a silver bullet that lifts poor households above the poverty line through a virtuous cycle of "more
income, more credit, more investment", towards a more cautious
approach emphasising the "protectional", as opposed to the
"promotional", dimensions of microfinance.

'Win-Win' Hypothesis:
Poverty and Lending Viability
Small, neighbourhood-based groups of borrowers, which
substitute the earlier focus on the individual, are credited with
providing a workable solution to some of the more intractable
problems inherent to rural credit programmes for the poor, as
identified by scholars working within the framework of New
Institutional Economics [Stiglitz 1990; Hoff and Stiglitz 1990].
The joint liability, peer monitoring and peer pressure that are
built into the organisational structure are identified as the key
features addressing the critical problems of screening (of potential defaulters), incentive (inducing borrowers to repay) and
enforcement (compelling repayment)at reduced transactioncosts
to lenders. The distribution of repayment responsibilities over
smaller, more frequent instalments, more easily manageable to
the borrower,has constituted innovation in lending technologies
thatfacilitatestimely repayment[Johnson 1997]. The convenience
of microcreditprogrammesto the poor has been furtherenhanced
by streamlineddisbursal mechanisms and simpler documentation
requirements,and the group-generatedjoint liability dynamic by
which members co-guarantee each other's loans, obviating the
need to pledge physical collateral [Ledgerwood 1999].
The high repayment performance and the relative absence of
interest rate subsidies in microcredit programmes have enabled
microcredit based development interventions win a broadbased constituency of admirers including commercial banks and
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December 17, 2005

powerful donor agencies. The "discovery" that not only were the
poor bankable,but that banking with the poor could be profitable
as well, suggested the prospect of the financially viable
microfinance institution, which addressed poverty related concerns even while it attempted to cover its lending costs - the
much celebrated win-win formula of the dominant discourse
[Mayoux 1998]. The concerns regarding self-sustenance of the
development agent have in turn found resonance with the neoliberal ideological climate of the 1980s and the 1990s. The
microfinance revolution, as Marguerite Robinson (an influential
votary of microfinance) puts it, is therefore the "large scale,
profitable provision of microfinance services - small savings and
loans - to economically active poor people by sustainable financial institutions [Robinson 2001:10, italics author's].

Microfinance and Global Poverty Agenda

It is to be noted that the growing intensity of concerns about
povertyin the wake of the implementationof neo-liberal economic
reforms in several regions of Latin America, Africa and Asia
and the consequent rearticulation of a "New Poverty Agenda"
for the 1990s by importantinstitutional actors such as the World
Bank and the UNDP constitute the context within which the
phenomenal growth of microcredit programmes has been taking
place. Researchers have argued that the "strategic embedding"
of microcredit in the global political economy of poverty reduction serves as a political safety-net by containing resistance to
neo-liberaleconomic policies [Weber2001 ]. Analysts have pointed
to the significant presence of microcredit and micro-enterprise
projects in relief packages, especially the Emergency Social
Fund, designed by the World Bank to contain popular agitations
in third world countries undergoing structural reform [Weber
2001]. Mayoux (2002) notes that microfinance was promoted
in Africa as the grassroot dimension of the "human face" of
structural adjustment policies, which had created widespread
unemploymentandpushedup the costs of basic amenities [Mayoux
2002].
Critics of the New Poverty Agenda of the 1990s have argued
that it entails soft-pedalling the role of the state and is marked
by the conspicuous absence of the agenda of redistribution of
economic resources and asset ownership [Gershman and Irwin
2000]. Microcredit programmes do not entail structural redistributionof non-renewable resources as land reform programmes
would and yet constitute an anti-poverty intervention of tremendous public visibility as they mobilise large numbers of the poor
seeking access to credit, creating federations of the rural and
urbanpoor. We understandtherefore the instrumental and strategic leverage that microcredit programmes offer to powerful
global development actors who need to manage economic restructuring-relatedpolitical and social tensions in developing
economies and to respond adequately to studies that reveal
increasing poverty levels.

Questioning 'Win-Win':
Institutional Viability and Poverty Targeting
At the outset, we note that although research findings relating
to other countries are also cited wherever relevant, this section
focuses largely on the experience of the Grameen-styled, povertytargeted microfinance institutions of Bangladesh, comprising
primarily the Grameen Bank itself, microcredit programmes
organised by internationally-acclaimed Bangladeshi NGOs such
as the BRAC and Association for Social Action (ASA) and the
government's own programmes - the Rural Development
Project-12 (RD-12) and the Thana Resource Development and

Employment Programme (TRDEP).2 We note that some of the

largest and best-known MFIs in Bangladesh have modelled the
organisationalstructureof their micro-lending programmeon the
Grameen Bank so that we may speak of a "Grameen system"
[Malcolm Harper 2002a]. It has been estimated that over 10
million clients in Bangladesh use the Grameen system through
30 MFIs with more than 10,000 clients each and hundreds of
other smaller organisations thatare following the Grameen model
in Bangladesh [ibid 2002a].
Research on microfinance programmes has problematised the
'win-win" hypothesis by pointing to the trade-offs and unintended outcomes that result when fe,t,res aimed at ensuring the
programme goals of repayment performance and institutional
viability are seen to discriminate agaii-st core poor membership.
Even as repaymentperformanceand lenderviability have emerged
as the critical markers of programme success, pressures on the
MFI to achieve institutional sustainability have increased and
have been reflected in policy decisions to expand manifold the
scale of programmes, increase the volume of loans disbursed per
borrower, increase interest rates, tighten repayment discipline by
enforcing punitive strategies and offer minimalist credit
programmes (eschewing an earlier integrated approach to issues
of rural poverty and development).
Studies have found that the Grameen Bank, startedin the early
1970s and BRAC's microcredit programme, started in the mid1980s, have been moving away from working with core poor
sections due to donor imperatives related to the generation of
revenues thatenable them to cover all costs. The focus of BRAC,
in its phase of expansion from the late 1980s, shifted from
efficient poverty targeting at the field level towards repayment
performance and from the quality of services to the poorest to
the fulfilment of quantitative targets of disbursal instead [Montgomery et al 1996]. Micro-level investigation has revealed that
the policy of credit deepening (increasing the number of loans
per borrower)thatGrameen Bank has aggressively pursued since
the early 1990s has intensified the incidence of inclusion of nontarget (relatively better-off) sections by making the programme
more attractive to these households [Matin 1998]. The microcredit programmeof ASA of Bangladesh, that was started in the
1990s, endeavoured from the beginning to reduce dependence
on donor funds through larger loan sizes, higher interest rates
(when compared to Grameen and Proshika), lower levels of
investment in group development or member trainingand greater
emphasis on supervision and repayment control [Jain and Moore
2003].
Research literature indicates that the rigid design of microcredit programmes and the limited range of financial services
offered have made the arena of the microcredit project a difficult
terrainto negotiate for poorer sections. Jain and Moore's study
of four leading microfinance programmes in Bangladesh3 found
that the narrow emphasis on credit disbursal and the resultant
neglect of deposit mobilisation, the limited range of loan sizes,
the standardisedcredit packages and the absence of choice with
regard to repayment schedules were integral components of
microcredit programme strategies that aim to reduce operational
costs, make programmes easier to monitor and lower required
levels of staff training. Programme design that seeks foolproof
repayment by mandating weekly repayments require the clients
to start repaying loans from pre-existing savings stock, thereby
effectively excluding the poorest from participation [Jain and
Moore 2003]. Inflexible and non-negotiable repaymentschedules
have implied little assistance in coping with stress events and
financial shocks suffered by members and have also caused
liquidation of assets by families in order to meet deadlines
[Snodgrassand Sebstad 2002]. Researchershave also been critical

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of the absence of free access to member savings in Grameen

and BRAC andorganisations worldwide thatfollow the Grameen
model [Montgomeryetal 1996].4 Hulme (2003) notes the "extreme
case" of several east African MFIs that have no place for clients
who wish to only make savings and not take loans, as savings,
unlike loan products, are not designed to cover the costs of the
institution.
Limited loan products, the absence of emergency loans in
microcredit programmes and non-negotiable repayment have
contributedto multiple membership in microfinance programmes
and to the continuing reliance of members on the more flexible
and timely services offered by informal moneylenders [Gifford
2002; Fernando2001 ]. Members have been found to borrow from
moneylenders to repay the MFI and vice versa. Such continuous
cross-financing, exacerbated by the MFI's policy of putting
households on a treadmill of increasing loan size, has been found
to lead to the collapse of the poorest households [Sinha and Matin
1998]. Researchers have consequently characterised the current
generation of microcredit programmes as a "limited product"
industry[Cohen2002], which has facilitatedexpansion of outreach
to poor borrowers and has reduced transaction costs, even as it
suffers from limited social and financial performance through
lack of outreach depth (ability to reach the poorest) and poor
client retention [Dunn 2002]. Product homogeneity has been
identified as primarilyresponsible for walk out by borrowersand
high rates of client desertion [Dunn 2002; Cohen 2002].
The non-participatory nature of programme design, limited
memberparticipationin crucial policy and operational decisions,
the relative power and authority that programme staff command
vis-a-vis clientele and the manner in which these interact with
peer group pressures arising from the joint liability contract
constitute programme-related factors that limit the scope for
manoeuvre of the poorer clientele of microcredit programmes.
The structurallyunequal relationship between programme staff
and clients was reported to have worsened even as upscaling
pressuresand a focus on repayment performancegained momentum [Montgomery 1995]. Montgomery's study of BRAC found
thatit was customary for field officers to use the threatof starving
the entire village organisation of future loans unless defaulters
paid up. The exclusionary logic that ensued was reflected in the
eviction of poorest members as an act of self-protection by village
organisations and adversely affected borrowers who faced a
temporarycash flow crisis, thereby becoming "badrisks"for their
co-members [Montgomery 1995].
A rigorous and large-scale examination of non-participation
of eligible targetgroup members in BRAC found that while more
than 76 per cent of rural households in the sample studied did
meet the eligibility criteria of BRAC, about 65 per cent of
moderately poor and 60 per cent of core poor sections were not
members of BRAC [Evans et al 1999]. The study found indirect
evidence thatpeer group expectations and institutional incentives
were likely to have contributed to non-participation of a high
section of the poorest perceived as credit liability. The commissioned study on microfinance for the World Bank's World
Development Report 2000-01 (WDR 2000-01) which reviewed
the operation of seven microfinance programmes in four countries (Bangladesh, Uganda, Bolivia and the Philippines) was unequivocal in its finding that microfinance programmes did not
reach destitute sections, that the extreme poor sections who
participatedwere not a majority and that the majority of clients
belonged to moderate poor and vulnerable non-poor households
[Sebstad and Cohen 2000].
Researchers have also argued that the effect of microfinance
programmes upon the economic well-being of client households has had differential implications for different sections

of the poor and nowhere is this clearer than in their record in

increasing household incomes by financing enterprises, which
we examine below.

Heterogeneity of the Poor:

Lessons from Microfinance Programmes
One of the key insights from research on the income enhancement effects of microcredit programmes is the heterogeneity of
the poor so that the question of addressing poverty concerns may
be reformulated as one of looking at which sections of the poor
arereachedandeffectively served.David Hulme andPaulMosley' s
study, which critically examined the poverty alleviation impact
of 13 selected microcredit programmes worldwide, found that
well-designed lending programmes could move large numbers
of poor people above the official poverty line. However, there was
clear evidence to show that the impact of the loan on borrowers'
incomes was relatedto theirexisting level of income as evidenced
in the greatercapacity of the "upper"and "middle"poor sections,
relative to the "core poor", to utilise the enterprise possibilities
opened up through access to microcredit. As borrowers with
higher income levels and higher access to information about
market conditions could access a wider range of investment
opportunities and cushion themselves better against risks, initial
life circumstances were found to be an importantfactor accounting for successful entrepreneurship[Hulme and Mosley 1996].
We note that the crucial question of differing capacities of
different sections of the poor to exploit avenues for income
generation through self-employment foregrounds a more fundamental limitation of microcredit that transcends issues relating
to programme design, poor-unfriendly or otherwise, and points
to the structurallimitations of certain sections of poor households
that thwart their capacity to absorb and put to productive use
enterprise-linked credit. The facile assumption underlying promotional strategies, epitomised by the "low income, low credit,
low investment, more income, more credit, more investment"
model (advocated by prominent microcredit practitioners such
as Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank), has been
critiqued by researchers for overlooking complicated realities
reflected in the differing abilities of the poor to seize entrepreneurial opportunities, their heterogeneous economic situations
and the situation prevailing in the wider economic environment
[Hulme and Mosley 1996].
We note that the research literature that we have reviewed so
far has sought to understand (a) the organisational structures
through which microcredit is delivered with a view to understanding how participatoryand democratic these structures are;
(b) the design of financial services/programme design in order
to assess how flexible and user-friendly these are; and (c) the
largersocial and economic structuresin which microcredit transactions are inevitably embedded, in order to show that these
structural factors have critical implications for their ability to
finance enterprises and enhance incomes of the poor.

Microfinance, Vulnerability Reduction

and Risk Management
As researchfindings have pointed to the constraintsthat impede
the capacity of microfinance programmes to lift poor households
to above poverty line status in a unilinear fashion, in other words,
from serving as a "promotional" strategy [Hulme and Mosley
1996], the dominant discourse around microfinance has
foregrounded the potential of microfinance to serve as a

"protectional"
strategy,i e, by protectingincomesandconsumption levels of the poor from falling below a certainthreshold

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5403

level. It is arguedthat protectional financial services (easy-access

emergency loans, soft loans as consumption loans, easily-withdrawable savings, insurance facilities that protect against death,
disability, etc) work better for core poor sections by smoothing
income and consumption fluctuations and strengthening coping
strategies in the event of crises [Hulme and Mosley 1996]. This
focus on the income and consumption smoothing effects of
microfinance has made it a crucial ingredient of poverty combating strategies of vulnerability reduction and risk mitigation.
Research findings that have demonstrated the limited income
impact of microfinance programmes, especially upon poorer
members, have fed into the dominant microfinancediscourse and
forced some of the globally important players in the field of
microfinance to take cognisance of the import of research on
microfinance. The corresponding shift in the projection of
microfinance is best exemplified by the changing representation
of microfinance between the World Bank's World Development
Report 1990: Poverty, and the WDR2000-01: Attacking Poverty.
Microcredit finds place in chapter 4 of the WDR (1990) titled
'Promoting Economic Opportunities for the Poor', which identifies increasing access to credit as one of the strategies aiming to
increase participationof the poor in growth processes along with
increasing access to land, infrastructure and technology and
improvingtenancy. The reportconcludes thatmicrofinance interventions have led to successful coverage of extremely poor
sections andthatmicro-enterpriselending has exercised considerable impact on the income levels of the poor [World Bank 1990].
In contrast, the WDR (2000-01) emphasises the potential of
microfinanceprogrammes to better address concerns of vulnerabilityandriskmanagementrelativeto those of overcomingpoverty
throughincome enhancement [World Bank 2001]. The commissioned study on microfinance for WDR(2000-01) focuses on the
impact of microfinance on non-income dimensions of poverty
and specifically on the use of microfinance services to build
assets, mitigate risks and reduce vulnerability [SebstadandCohen
2000]. The WDR (2000-01) acknowledges that the reach of
microfinancehas been limited to moderately poor sections rather
than the poorest and recommends greater flexibility in loan size
and repayment schedules to reach poorer sections. The World
Bank's framework for attacking poverty, as elucidated in the
WDR(2000-01), emphasised action on three inter-relatedfronts:
Empowerment (addressing inequalities that prevent the poor
from influencing policies and interventions that influence their
lives), security (addressing the risk and vulnerability that poor
nationsface in the global economy and thatthe poor within nations
experience) and opportunity (creating conditions for investment
andsustainableeconomic expansion in which the poor participate).
It is interestingto note that microfinance finds place in the section
on "security"as one of the policy responses for improving risk
management alongside health insurance, old age assistance,
unemployment insurance and others [World Bank 2001].
An importantpoint to note, at this juncture, is that by tracing
the shifting discourse around microfinance as a poverty alleviation strategy, we are not positing that microfinance has been
displaced from its pivotal position within the dominant development discourse as an anti-poverty strategy of great efficacy.
As claims regarding the ability of microfinance programmes to
lift all poor households decisively above the poverty line by
increasing their incomes have been contested, the development
orthodoxy have scaled down the merits of microfinance to a
commensurate degree, but have not displaced it from its preeminent position as a key anti-poverty strategy. We are arguing
that even as concerns of vulnerability and risk mitigation have
themselves become central to the development discourse,
microfinance finds itself upheld as the key route by which poor
5404

households may avoid downward descent into immiserisation.

Indeed the valorisation of microfinance as a household level risk
managementstrategy has gained importanceat the time that"Risk
Management" and "Vulnerability Reduction" have emerged as
the catchwords of the international development community
concerned over the possibility of- as Naila Kabeer (2003) points
out - an increase in the vulnerability of populations across the
globe in response to the inception of structural adjustment
programmes, economic reforms, globalisation processes and
international and regional financial crises.
Having briefly reviewed the shifting representation of
microfinance as a poverty-combating strategy in the global
development discourse, we turn to the scenario of SHG based
microfinance in India and attempt to explore the issue of what
lessons the research findings on the global microfinance experience hold for the Indian experience of microfinance.

Indian Microfinance Sector: Different Trajectory

A defining featureof the evolving microcreditscenario in India,
that several analysts have identified as marking it distinct from
that of other countries, has been the significant role that public
sector formal lending institutions, especially the nationalised
commercial banking structure, has played in the establishment
and expansion of financial intermediationthroughSHGs [Haiper
2002b; Kropp and Suran 2002]. NABARD's policy initiatives,
supported by the Reserve Bank of India, have been instrumental
in the development of the NABARD-MYRADA three-yearaction
research project, initiated in 1986-87, into a nationwide pilot
project linking 500 SHGs with nationalised commercial banks
by 1992; this eventually culminated in the mainstreamingof SHG
banking as a corporate strategy of banks in 1996.5 The SHGbank linkage programme has since grown into what has been
described as the world's largest microfinance programmein terms
of outreach.6Over 90 per cent of the SHGs linked to banks under
the SHG-bank linkage scheme comprise women's groups
[NABARD 2004].
What is of interest to us is the significant departure that the
Indian SHGs represent in terms of organisational structurefrom
the Grameen model. A collective of about 20 members, the SHG
saves a certain amount every month and lends its savings on a
monthly basis to group members, usually on terms decided by
group consensus. In addition to group-generatedfunds, the group
may also borrow from outside, either from the commercial bank
with which it maintains a group account or from the NGO
sponsoring it, in order to supplement the group's loanable funds.
As SHG members maintain their individual accounts with the
SHG (and not with the sponsoring NGO), the SHG is the retailer
in the Indian case and performs most of the transactionfunctions,
unlike in Bangladesh, where the microfinance institution is the
retailer. Member-controlled and self-managed SHGs, by virtue
of being micro-banks,are posited as being financial organisations
in their own right [Harper 2002a]. Therefore, Indian SHGs
attempt to harness to the optimal extent the existing banking
infrastructureand to link the rural poor to formal credit institutions from which they have been hitherto excluded.7
Bearing this in mind, we now raise a few questions on the
potential of SHGs to meet the savings and credit requirements
of their members and finance their income-generation activities
in an effective manner.The following section raises the question
of whetherissues andconcernsraisedby researchon the Bangladesh
microfinance experience can adequately serve as a lens through
which Indian microfinance can be critically examined, given the
crucialorganisationaland institutionaldifferences between Indian
and Bangladeshi microfinance. In the process of doing so, we
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December 17, 2005

also attempt to outline an agenda for furthering critical research

and reflection on the IndianSHG-based microfinance experience.

Protectional Financial Strategies:

Better Realised through SHGs?8
It can be posited that SHGs, by virtue of the greater scope for
intra-groupdecision-makingon terms of access to group resources
and bank funds sourced under the SHG-bank linkage scheme,
may be able to more effectively harness the protectional dimensions of financial services by responding in a timely and sensitive
manner to the emergency requirements of individual members.
Issues such as immediate access to loans during emergencies,
availabilityof loans to group members at concessional ratesduring
a period of stress, negotiation of repaymentschedules and lending
terms and withdrawal of savings when necessary (identified as
key ingredients of protectional strategies) may be decided by
group members on the basis of the perceived authenticity and
urgencyof co-members' needs. In the absence of excessive external
pressure from relatively more powerful and over-bearing NGOs
andMFIs driven by donor impulses (as in the case of the Grameen
modelled MFIs), groups may feel less pressured to "discipline"
defaulters and be able to "protect"them instead, should the group
perceive the reason for default as genuinely worthy of assistance.
Moreover, it is possible that even within a federation of SHGs
promoted by a particular NGO in a geographically contiguous
area, the terms of lending could vary from one group to another
andaredeterminedby decisions taken at the level of the individual
group. We note that this is quite unlike the negotiation of terms
between donors and top-level NGO management and the imposition of a resultant standardised, centralised, top-down and
supply-driven mode of microcredit delivery as in the case of the
big MFIs of Bangladesh. While such potential exists for independent and client-focused functioning of Indian SHGs, the full
realisation of the potential many not be as simple as it looks.
The likelihood that peer pressure generated within the SHG
is of a different order relative to what prevails in village level
groups borrowing from Grameen-modelled MFIs, makes it
worthwhile to investigate the dynamics of intra-group negotiations over resources in SHGs and the determinants of these
pressures. At the outset, we need to recognise that intra-group
peer dynamics in SHGs are influenced by the imperatives of
various agencies including sponsoring NGO and banks. Even
though we have noted that the SHG can potentially act in greater
autonomy vis-a-vis the sponsoring agency, the attitude of the
sponsoring NGO on issues such as crisis-induced defaults cannot
be disregardedentirely. The NGO might indicate throughtraining
programmes and interaction with programme coordinators that
it would prefer to see more stringent/sympathetic action on the
part of the groups. Often, the NGO feels compelled to demonstrate close to 100 per cent repayment of internal loans of the
SHGs it sponsors as proof of its own efficacy and managerial
abilities. Field experience also indicatesthat SHGs arenot entirely
free to set their terms of lending, savings amount, repayment
duration and interest rates. The sponsoring organisation issues
"guidelines"to groups and sometimes insists on their adherence.
A group may, therefore, not enjoy the right to lower its interest
rates during particular seasons (no rain, no work) and suspend
repayment for a period of time. It would be necessary, in this
context, to understand the social consciousness of the NGO
leadershipand its ideological orientation,viz, whether it perceives
itself primarily as an agent enhancing the efficacy of grassroots
level financial intermediation processes or whether it visualises

microcreditgroupsas partof a strategyof social mobilisation

aimingto buildcollectiveactionandsolidarityamongthe poor.

Economic and Political Weekly

We would also need to be cautious about the benefits of

completely decentralisedversus controlled decision-making
powers vested with the SHG. Groups,left to themselves,can
set interestratesandrepaymentschedulesthataremoreexploitative of individualmembersbut seek to promotethe interests
of thegroupas a wholeby increasingthetotalvolumeof loanable
funds.SHGs'relianceon group-generated
corpusforlendingand
groups'autonomyin decidingthefixed amountto be contributed
everymonthcouldmeanthatsome membersdecideat the outset
to set thesavingsamounthighenoughto excludepoorerwomen.
Rulesdeterminedby anoutsideagency,sensitiveto theconcerns
of poorermembers,can sometimesoffset exclusivistnormsthe
groupmay adoptif left entirelyto its discretion.
Whenanalysingthedeterminants
of irntra-group
dynamicsand
theirpotentialto "protect"
ratherthan"punish"poorermembers,
the commercialbankfinancingthe SHG is yet anotherinstitutionalactorof significance.UndertheSHG-banklinkagescheme,
bankers'routinelycheckgroupaccounts(intra-group
lendingand
borrowing)to assess creditworthinessof the prospectivegroup
for thelinkageloan.Theirdispleasurewiththegroup'stolerance
of laxityin repaymentcould be an importantfactorinfluencing
thegroup'scourseof actionin the eventof default.Fieldreports
in TamilNaduindicatethatbankmanagersareknownto refuse
the linkageloanto the groupeven if one SHG memberdefaults
or makeslate paymenton group-sourcedloans. SHG members
have sometimesresortedto subterfugeincludingthe fudgingof
group accountsbefore bank supervisionin order to create a
semblanceof timely repayments.We note that bankers'rigid
attitudeon promptandtimelyrepaymentcan havea detrimental
effect on peer empathyfor defaultsand late repayments.
Field reportssuggest thatthe targetingof SHGs as the ideal
delivery channelsof credit-cum-subsidyassistanceunderthe
GramSwarozgarYojana(SGSY)9 schemehave
Swarnajayanti
causedbankofficials to make access to the SGSY contingent
upongroupmembers'repaymentof balanceson olderschemes
such as the IntegratedRuralDevelopmentProgramme(IRDP)
that men in theirfamilies have taken.WomenSHG members,
whose husbandsor sons have outstandingIRDP balances,are
accusedof queeringthe pitchfor the restof the groupandhave
come underpressureby co-membersto eitherquitthe groupor
pay the balance immediately.We see, therefore,that group
pressureson individualmembers,fuelled by bank efforts to
secureolderdefaults,containthepotentialto provokeexclusionary pressureson co-members.
Inthiscontext,thecaseof IndianNGOsthatpromotesecondary
level federationsof SHGsraisesinterestingquestions;moreso,
in the lightof the informationthatorganisationssuch as BRAC
in Bangladesharereluctantto createsecondarylevel federations
for fear thatthese could be used by membersto bringpressure
to inducechanges in its rigid financialservices [Montgomery
et al 1996].The literatureon SHG federationsin Indiainforms
us thatthese aim to ensurethe sustainabilityof groupsafterthe
sponsoringagencywithdrawsby protectinggroupsfrombureaucraticor politicalcaptureand that they also facilitatetraining,
account-keeping,trouble-shootingand the access of groupsto
governmentschemes [Fisherand Sriram2002a]. Whethersecondarylevel federationshave takenon financialintermediation
vis-a-vistheirmemberSHGs(asin thecaseof DhanFoundation'
s
Kalanjiams)or have chosen not to engage in on-lending(such
as MYRADA and PRADAN-sponsoredgroups), Fisher and
Sriram(2002a)notethattheyformpartof astrategyof organisationbuildingpursuedby NGOsto use microcreditto buildpeople's
organisations.An issue warrantingfurtherinvestigation,from
thepointof viewof thispaper,is whetherfederationsalsopossess
the potentialto developinto significantplayersthatcan protect

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the relative "autonomy" and "independence" of the group in

crucial decision-making areas vis-a-vis all external agencies,
including commercial banks and sponsoring NGOs. Where the
relationship between SHGs and the external agencies they are
in close contact with has an important bearing on the capacity
of SHGs to function effectively in a protectional sense, it would
be interesting to explore the role that federations exercise in
asserting the demands and perceived needs of SHGs. even when
they sometimes clash with the imperatives of other agencies they
deal with on an ongoing basis.
We. therefore, see that a analysis of the willingness of SHGs
to accommodate the crises of individual members requires much
more intensive, field-based research on the extent to which group
norms enable an individual in distress to access an emergency
loan during a period of crisis at concessional rates or to secure
a modification in the terms of repayment. In the absence of formal
regulations that hold in all cases, a set of informal practices on
such matters may have evolved over a period of time. It might
be interesting to examine the extent to which these norms apply
impartially to all members or whether they appear to be the
privilege of some. It may also be the case that willingness to
empathise with members in distress may not always translateinto
an effective ability to do so on account of the limited capacity
of the group to completely absorb members' crises without
considerable damage to its own fragile resource base.
We close this section by emphasising the need for empirical
research on intra-group power dynamics and on the possible
determinants of peer group pressures within SHGs, before we
conclude that the greater potential for more empathetic group
action and for better harnessing of the protectional dimensions
of credit-based poverty alleviation strategies are necessarily
realised through SHG-based transactions.

Channelling SGSY Credit through SHGs:

Case of Promotional Dogma?
The question that we raise in this section is whether the
conceptualisation of the SGSY scheme, which entails enterprise
loans to SHG members, takes into account the critique of promotional lending strategies from the global microfinance experience we had reviewed earlier, especially with regardto the issue
of the differential capacities of poorer borrowers to take advantage of income generation opportunities. The ministry of rural
development, in its guidelines for SGSY, declares as a fundamental article of faith, its belief in the latent entrepreneurial
capacities of the rural poor. as is expressed in its statement that
with the right support, the poor would emerge as successful
producers of goods and services [Gol 1999]. The SGSY is,
therefore, primarily about injecting credit for promotional purposes and is premised on the expectation that households can
use the credit-financed enterprises to make a linear, uni-dimensional movement from below poverty to above poverty line status.
Researchfindings pertainingto the differential impactof microenterpriselending upon differently-endowed sections of the poor,
deriving from the global microfinance experience that we have
reviewed [Hulme and Mosley 1996: Montgomeryet al 1996] have
been anticipated, as it were, by the early critical assessments of
the IRDP of India - the nationwide, self-employment based.
poverty alleviation programme. A consistent criticism of the
IRDP has been directed at its lack of understanding of the
differing resource endowments of the poor and the effect of the
Antyodaya principle of pushing the poorest sections - those least
able to bear risks and with minimal skills and entrepreneurial
support services - into risky self-employment ventures [Pulley
1989: Dreze 1990]. Indian researchers have emphasised the
5406

imperative of distinguishing among poor households on the basis

of those who possess the capabilities and resources to undertake
self-employment ventures, those who do not and may be considered eligible for wage employment instead and within the
categoryof the latter,families withoutanable-bodiedadultmember,
who require access to state sponsored social security schemes
on priority basis [Hirway 1985; Bagchee 1987].
A key theme emerging from the wage versus self-employment
debate that engaged Indian scholars in the 1980s appears to be
that the success of employment programmes hinges critically on
reaching specific interventions (wage, self-employment, social
security plus wage employment) towards different sections of
the poor and fine-tuning these programmes so that they meet the
varying needs of differently-endowed households. It is important
to note that such meticulous planning and targeting of specific
components of anti-poverty programmes to differently-endowed
sections of the poor is not inherently built into the structure of
NGO/MFI-sponsored SHGs or small borrower groups in India
or elsewhere. The point that is being argued here is that the sheer
existence and effective functioning of SHGs and other variants
of microcredit groups are not by themselves evidence of the
operation of decentralised planning or of any kind of planned
approach to the employment needs of group members. Policy
response to trenchant criticism by Indian researchers of the
unsuitability of the poorest for the risks of loan-financed enterprises has taken the form of jettisoning the Antyodaya principle
of the IRDP or the priority selection of the poorest within the
BPL sections in the SGSY. However, the SGSY continues to
be ill-equipped to meet the challenges of the agenda of gauging
the suitability of differently placed poor households for various
forms of employment programmesdepending on their initial asset
position or possession of prior entrepreneurialexperience, training or skills. Although the guidelines envisage an elaborate
process of planning by block and district committees prior to
the choice of enterprises with regard to availability of infrastructure, markets,technology and the capacities of Swarozgaris, early
assessments of the SGSY indicate that the notion of comprehensive, holistic planning at the block and district levels remains
as much of an illusion in the SGSY as it did with the IRDP [Ghosh
2001: Nair and Mathew 2000: Reddy 2000].
The central government's decision to route the SGSY scheme
through SHGs in a context where there is massive policy support
for the creationof women's groups as well as the requirementthat
at least 50 per cent of the SHGs reached in a block be women's
groups may be perceived, at one level, as policy commitment
to the agenda of reaching institutional credit to women producers
in ordertofinancetheirenterprises.By mandatingthatbankofficials
ensure distributionof their annual "quota"of SGSY-related loan
finance throughSHGs, bank staff could be forcing largeramounts
of loans tied to the end use of enterprise promotion upon women
who areneitherwilling, norable, to engage in loan-financedincome
generation.This could, in turn,imply the establishmentof unviable
enterprisesby women membersof SHGs forced to invest in income
earningactivities, or subversionof the programme'sobjectives by
SHG members, camouflaging their consumption needs as enterprise needs. The probability that only those who genuinely need
to invest in income-generation activities borrow for these purposes appears to be higher in the case of the SHG-bank linkage
scheme, where consumption related expenditure is permitted.
A related area of concern is the promotion of micro-enterprise
lending without adequate support to the agenda of ensuring
access to markets for SHG women. Several SHGs have complained of the imposition of specific enterpriseactivities on them
by block and bank officials eager to demonstrate "variety" and
"diversity"in the choice of enterprisesas in the case of toy- making,
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December 17, 2005

embroidery. candle-making, handicrafts and small decorative

items in which they often lack experience. accompanied by little
training and no guarantee of markets. The district development
administration possesses no reliable data on the varieties of
income generating activities that SHG women, financed either
by the bank, the NGO or group funds, have initiated or on the
proportion of women who are engaging in market production
for the first time, as against those who are investing loans in
pre-existing small family businesses. Such an enumerationwould
be an indispensable first step towards an assessment of the forms
of marketing, infrastructureand technical support that economically active SHG women require.
ItappearsthereforethatIndian
policy-makershavenot sufficiently
factored in findings related to the structural limitations of promotionallending strategiesthathave emerged both from the global
microfinance experience and from the older IRDP experience.10

gap created by a reversal of state commitment to financing the

productionand consumption needs of the ruralpoor and therefore
whether the current policy thrust accorded to the agenda of
expansion of SHGs can amount to much more than a rhetorical
tribute to concerns of poverty alleviation.
The prospectsfor the financial viability of the income-generating
activities of the poor, on an economywide scale, appear even
more remote when we factor in analyses that demonstrate the
marginalisation of wage employment generation programmes.
An examination of the patternof intra-sectoral allocation within
the sector of "ruraldevelopment" programmes in central government expenditurefound thatruralwage employment programmes
(both the JawaharRozgar Yojana and the Employment Assurance
Scheme), which were the most importantcomponents (claiming
a share of more than 70 per cent in 1994-95) showed a declining
trend in the second half of the 1990s and fell dramatically to
23.7 per cent in 2001 [Mooij and Dev 2002].12 In this context,
we would do well to recall Nilakantha Rath's argument that
Microcredit and Macrodebit
the economic feasibility of enterprises of the poor (and thereBefore concluding we would like to sound a note of caution fore of self-employment programmes) depend critically upon
about the currentcelebration of the poverty-enhancement capaci- wage employment programmes that generate the large-scale
ties of SHG-based microcredit by Indian policy-makers. Issues markets for the goods produced by them [Rath 1985].
pertaining to the low volume of bank finance extended to the
Taking this further. Tara S Nair (2005) points to the lack of
microcredit sector (Rs 2,412 per member by end-March 2004) appreciationof demandside issues in discussions on microfinance,
despite a remarkablerateof growth in the numberof SHGs linked of the relevance of investments in irrigation, rural infrastructure
and the pronounced regional disparities in the growth of SHGs and the like, to non-farm sector enterprises expected of SHG
(the southern region accounting for 63 per cent of SHGs linked members and views with concern the less than encouraging trend
and 79 per cent of SHG bank credit in 2004) have been flagged in capital formation in the agriculturesector since the 1980s. She
off in the microcredit literature as areas of concern. What is even cautions that upscaling of microfinance in this local ecohowever of even greater concern is the recent trend in the rural nomic environment could lead to low productivity activities and
credit sector. Critical analysts have argued forcefully that the even failure of enterprises.
Indian state has been withdrawing from its commitment towards
financing the investment needs of weaker section borrowers and
By Way of Conclusion
that the decade of financial and banking sector reforms, undertaken as a component of macro economic reforms, have in effect
By way of conclusion, we note that further evaluation of the
eroded the agenda of banking with the rural poor [Nair 2000; efficacy of SHG-based savings and credit transactions, either in
Ramachandran and Swaminathan 2003]. Reforms that have promoting the incomes of poor households through investment
followed the recommendations of the Narasimham Committee in income-generating activities or in protecting households from
on Financial System (1991) are held responsible for having damaging their precarious economic resources during periods of
induced an overriding fixation with the improvement of the crises warrantsfield studies that can map the heterogeneous poor
allocative and financial efficiency of the banking sector so that who currentlyconstitute the clientele of SHGs in India. Studying
performanceevaluation criteria have shifted from attainmentof the differentialloan histories of differentindividualswithin groups
the goals of social banking towards profitability and portfolio may offer a clue to understanding which sections of the poor
quality [Kohli 1997]. The declining share of ruralbank branches, within SHGs are graduatingover time to income-generation and
a fall in rural to total bank credit, an adverse movement in the which are resorting to more distress-related borrowing and why.
rural credit-deposit ratio (rural), a decline in lending to small We can perhapsseek to furthercomplicate the picture by situating
borrowersand informal sectors, the worsening of inter-regional the SHGs being researched in different contextual settings: areas/
disparitiesand the falling share of credit to agricultureand small- regions marked by accountable public institutions relating to the
scale industries within the priority sector have been identified delivery of health, education and the public distribution system
as the key indices thatreflect the increasingly skewed distribution vis-a-vis more deprived pockets of the country marked by a
of bank credit [EPWRF 2005]."I
complete absence or nearbreakdownof government provisioning
It thus appears to be the case that greater access of women of essential services. It may even be worthwhile to probe the
members of SHGs belonging to poor rural households to insti- question of whetherresearchon the borrowing and saving patterns
tutionalcredit is taking place during a period markedby an overall of differently placed SHG members can be used to provide a
scaling down of institutional finance for the rural sector. It is micro view of the failures of the welfare state. 131
to be noted that disbursements under the SHG-bank linkage
programme in the year 2000-01 constituted less than one half Email: kalpa@vsnl.com
of I percent of the total amount that was disbursed for agriculture
and allied activities by the banking system during that year, while
Notes
disbursements under the SGSY scheme, targeted at officiallyis
of
the
researcher's
[This
ongoingPhDthesisworkon microfinance
designated BPL families, constituted more than two and a half underpaper part
the research supervision of Padmini Swaminathanof the Madras
times the advances under the SHG-bank linkage [Tankha 2002]. Instituteof
Development Studies (MIDS).]
This divergence between micro initiatives such as microfinance
1 Though microfinanceand microcreditare often used as interchangeable
and macro policies relating to the rural credit sector raises the
terms in the literature,it is generally agreed that microcreditor small
question of how MFIs and NGOs can possibly hope to fill the
loans for income-generation or consumption purposes refer to one
Economic and Political Weekly

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componentof a largerarrayof microfinanceservices thatcould include

savings, insuranceand other related business development services as
well. These terms will be used inter-changeablyin this paper.
2 The GrameenBank developed from an experimentalproject launched
in 1976 by MuhammadYunus (an economics professor)to targetcredit
to the poor organised into joint liability groups without demanding
physicalcollateral.Havingreceivedcriticalsupportfromthe centralbank
of Bangladeshin its early years, the Grameen project was established
as a bankto workexclusively with the poor with its own charterin 1983.
BangladeshRuralAdvancementCommittee(BRAC) was established
in 1972 as a charitableorganisationto help resettledisplacedhouseholds
duringthe 1971 warandexpandedits operationsfrom relief to integrated
communitydevelopment.BRAC's microcreditprogramme,modelledon
the Grameen Bank, was started in the mid-1980s, and has provided
assistance with marketing and technical skills, in addition to credit
access.
Association for Social Advancement, which was startedin the early
1980s with the agenda of social transformationand mobilisationof the
landless,chose microcredit,modelledon the Grameen,as its core activity
since the 1990s.
The RuralDevelopmentProject-12(RD-12), funded by the Canadian
InternationalDevelopment Agency (CIDA), is one component of the
Rural Poor Programme,the Bangladesh government's largest creditbased rural development programmetargeting the landless.
The Thana Resource Development and Employment Programme
(TRDEP),a projectoverseen by the Bangladeshgovernment'sministry
of youth and sports, was initiated by the government in 1987 in order
to reproducethe principles of the Grameen Bank.
For moreinformationon these organisationsreferto Khandker(1998),
Jain and Moore (2003), Goetz (2001), Montgomery et al (1996).
3 The organisationsstudied include Grameen,BRAC, ASA and Proshika
- and one in the Philippines - Centre for Agriculture and Rural
Development.
4 ASA's experimentwith a system of voluntarysavings introducedin 1997
illustrates the trade-off between quality of services and the costs of
makingthem available. An overall lower amount of savings mobilised
comparedto the older system of compulsorysavings, the costs of hiring
additionalregionalmanagersandauditors,the needto maintainsubstantial
reserves so as to offset the highly liquid natureof savings balance and
the lack of any evident impact on client dropout rates forced ASA to
revert to the earlier system of locked in savings [Meyer 2002].
5 A narrationof this development is available in the literatureand will
not be recountedhere [NABARD 1999;Fernandez2000; Dasgupta2001;
Kropp and Suran 2002].
6 As of March2004, underthe SHG-banklinkageprogramme,16.7 million
poor households in 563 districts covering all the states and union
territoriesin India had received microcreditthroughthe intermediation
of 10,79,091 self-help groups credit linked to banks (including RRBs
and cooperativebanks).Nearly 35,294 branchesof 560 banks including
48 commercialbanks, 196 RRBs and 316 cooperativeshad participated
in the programme[NABARD 2004].
7 A few organisationsin Indiado offer microcreditprogrammesmodelled
on the Grameen.Some of the well knownmicrocreditorganisationsbased
on the Grameenmodel in India include SHARE (Society for Helping
and AwakeningRuralPoor throughEducationin AndraPradesh),RDO
(Loyolam Bank of Rural Development and Organisation)in Manipur,
Cashpor Financial and Technical Services (Mirzapur,Uttar Pradesh),
Activistsfor Social Alternatives(ASA) in Tamil Nadu,RashtriyaGramin
Vikas Nidhi (Assam andOrissa).A public sectorbank,the OrientalBank
of Commercelends to small groups modelled on the Grameenthrough
its Dehradun(Uttaranchal)and Hanumangarh(Rajasthan)branches.
8 Inthissection,I referto interviewswith NGOs promotingSHGsin various
parts of Tamil Nadu that I have conducted as part of my PhD work.
9 The SGSY, successor to the IRDP and DWCRA, was introducedas a
nationwide,self-employment based, poverty alleviation programmein
April1999andsubstitutedthe IRDP,DWCRAandotherself-employment
programmes.The SGSY, which seeks to use self-help groupsas channels
of deliveryof credit-cum-subsidy
assistanceto below-poverty-linesections,
aims to bringevery assisted family above the poverty line in threeyears
by creating a monthly income of at least Rs 2,000 from the activity
undertaken,after repaymentof the bank loan.
10 Some innovative initiatives in the non-state sector in the direction of
integratingmicrocreditwith livelihood promotion,as in the case of the
work undertakenby BASIX, call for closer understandingand research.
BASIX, which claims that its ultimategoal is livelihood promotionand
not mere credit delivery, seeks to integratemicrocreditwith variegated
loan productsfor farm, non-farmactivities, housing and other general
purposes,providingtechnicalandbusiness supportservices to borrowers
who requirethem and deploying a multiplicity of lending methods to
make loans to peer groups (both SHGs and Grameen-modelledgroups)
as well as to individualborrowers [Fisher and Sriram2002b]. BASIX

5408

also directs its loans to the existing network of intermediariessuch as

agriculturalcommission agents, input dealers, wholesale merchants,
agro-processingfirms andeven moneylenders.BASIX uses this network
of marketagentsto deliverboth creditand technicaland supportservices
requiredby individualborrowersin orderto containthe transactioncosts
that would have accompaniedan effort to provide these services on a
direct, individual basis. While using the organisationalstructuresof a
NBFC and a licensed bank for its lending activities - where it strives
to offer "competitiveratesof return"to its investors- it has an associate
companyin the groupthatprovidesconsultancyandtrainingto borrowers
andhumanresourcedevelopmentservices to the groupand accepts grant
funds from donors [Fisher and Sriram 2002b, BASIX, http].
BASIX's endeavoursrepresentan interestingattemptto move beyond
theminimalismof the"creditonly"approachandtocentrestage livelihood
and ruralinfrastructural
development.However a key questionthatthese
efforts suggest pertainsto BASIX's pragmaticapproachof routingcredit
andsupportservices to borrowersthroughthe existing networkof market
agents and other intermediariesand whetherthe transactionsthat ensue
do not remain embedded in the power dynamics that inform these
relationships.Suffice it to say here that such experiences call for much
greater study and learning.
11 The shareof ruralbranchesin total bank branches,which had increased
significantly during the social banking era, has declined through the
1990s and since. Data analysedby the EPW ResearchFoundationshows
that the numberof ruralbranchesof SCBs have fallen from 32,981 in
March 1996 to 31,999 in September 2004 - a fall of 982 branches
signifying a loss in momentumof over 8,000 branches in ruralareas.
Ruralbranchesas percentageof total branches fell from 56.5 per cent
in March 1990 to 47.6 per cent in September2004 [EPWRF2005]. The
share of rural credit to total bank credit declined from 15.4 per cent
in March 1990 to 9.9 per cent in September2004 [EPWRF2005]. The
credit-depositratio (rural),which had exceeded the targeted60 per cent
in the 1980s, fell to 46.5 per cent by September 2004. A drastic fall
in the numberof small size loan accounts of less than Rs 25,000 (from
23 per cent of bank credit outstandingin March 1991 to 5.4 per cent
in March 2003) and the declining share of bank credit to "household
sectors"or the sum total of all informal sectors (from 58.3 per cent in
March 1990 to 43.6 per cent in March 2003) draw furtherattentionto
the re-distributionalfallout of banking reforms [EPWRF 2005].
Whereprioritysectorlendingtrendsareconcerned,analystshave noted
with particularconcernthe declining shareof agricultureand small-scale
industries within the priority sector, the decline in direct lending to
agriculture(relativeto indirectlending)and the implicationsof the RBI's
redefinitionof priority sector in the late 1990s that brought in newer
sub-sectorssuch as the software industryand venturefinancing into its
ambit. The share of agricultureand small-scale industriesin total bank
credit which stood at 15.9 per cent and 12.4 per cent in March 1990
respectively had fallen to 10 per cent and 5.7 per cent by March2003
[EPWRF 2005]. Within the category of agricultural lending, direct
lending to agriculturedeclined sharply from 73 per cent in 1995-96 to
45 per cent in 1999-2000, while the share of indirect lending (used for
a wide spectrumof activities including purchaseof vehicles and land
for housing purposes) almost doubled [EPWRF 2000].
12 Reducednumberof daysof employmentgeneratedunderwageemployment
schemes (570 million man days of average annual employment in the
Nineth Plan as compared to 1020 in the Eighth Five-Year Plan) have
followed a reduction in the average annual expenditure on wage
employment schemes (12 per cent down in the Ninth Plan). This has
been accompaniedby dwindling levels of annualcentralplan allocation
for ruraldevelopment (of which ruralemployment programmesare a
part)between 2003-04 and 2004-05 (in currentprices) and morerecently
between the earlieryears and the 2005-06 allocation(at constantprices).
Thesetrendsbelie thehypecreatedaroundtheNationalRuralEmployment
GuaranteeSchemeof theUnitedProgressiveAlliancegovernment[Dogra
2005; Dev 2005].

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