Beyond Micro-Credit: Putting development back into micro-finance

Micro-finance is one of the fastest growing development strategies, in many ways it is already outgrowing development with several micro-finance institutions becoming banks. But it is becoming clear that the provision of credit for enterprise development is not on its own leading to development. Beyond Micro-Credit sets out how Indian Micro-Finance Initiatives are combining micro-finance with a wide range of development goals, these include not only poverty alleviation through providing savings, credit and insurance services but also promoting livelihoods, empowering women, building people's organizations and changing institutions. It illustrates each of these from actual microfinance practice and explores the organizational challenges of combining such development goals with financial service provision. It includes detailed analysis of "self-help groups"; comparisons with microfinance practice in Bangladesh and contemporary methods of assessing performance and impact.

Thomas Fisher was until recently the Programme Director for Local Economic Renewal at the NEF, London, where he built a strong team in enterprise and finance

M S Sriram is a faculty member at the Centre for Management in Agriculture at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad