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Microfinance body formed, aims to help rural poor

More than 150 non-governmental organisations countrywide have for the first time come together in a ''professional cerebral grouping'' to offer guidance to the poor, especially in remote rural areas, on obtaining easy finance to better their lot.

The grouping, known as the India Collective on Micro Finance is significant also because the main government microcredit body, the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh, has stepped in as the umbrella coordinating organisation of this new outfit.

Headed by Rashtriya Mahila Kosh Executive Director Indira Mishra, it has at present a 21-member executive committee representing ''willing advocates, partners and collaborators on microfinance."

The Collective was formed at a two-day national meet on microfinance that concluded in New Delhi on December 4. Organised by the RMK in collaboration with Actionaid India and the Bankers Institute of Rural Development, it was attended by representatives of major NGOs, banks, international agencies and the government.

Aimed at providing information, networking and capacity building, the collective hoped to be an effective body working both inside and outside the government, according to Actionaid Executive Director Amitava Mukherjee.

The conference was inaugurated by India's First Lady, Usha Narayanan, who highlighted the importance of the schemes and techniques of channelisation of microfinance. She called for expansion of the scheme to the maximum extent possible as women had proved themselves to be sufficiently good fund managers and masters of skills necessary for their sustenance.

Admitting that the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh as the government funding agency did feel constrained, Mishra said the present body, by covering a larger area and bringing varied people in to its fold, would be able to play a more effective and transformative role.

Clarifying that the present collective was not a funding body, Mishra said its main objective was to collate and disseminate information, techniques and methodologies on microfinance. As such, there were enough funding bodies, both governmental and non governmental, but about which the people were ignorant. The need, therefore, was to reach out to the people and make them aware of the variety of finances that could be available to them to enable them to stand on their feet.

Given the variety of schemes and funding bodies, the present collective was more like a mosaic that had brought together all such bodies to benefit from each other, Mukherjee said.

Secretary of women and child development Asha Das hoped the groups helping women at all levels would become epitomes of women's empowerment. Placing great hopes on the microcredit schemes for poor women, she said channelising of microfinance through women's self-help groups at grass-root levels made these instrumental in teaching women the value of saving which becomes the initial resource for mutual financing among group members.

Participants felt that the strength of the groups would also lead to democratising women's participation at the panchayat level.

On the immense potential of the NGOs in the field, Mukherjee said apart from their massive resources, they had enough schemes and models under way which could be very effective if replicated successfully elsewhere.

UNI