Posts Tagged ‘Micro Loans India’
Micro Loans Have Changed India
April 6, 2011 | 
Author How Micro Loans have changed India
Dola Tikader lives in the village of Bankura in West Bengal. For years, she has struggled to make ends meet with her family’s craft of making beaded jewelry. But now Dola is free of most of her financial troubles, is working on expanding her business and has employed 9 other women from her village as well. All of them make a decent income and are generally quite a happy bunch. How has this been possible?
Well, the thing that made this huge difference was a micro loan. Dola got a micro loan of Rs 15,000 from an MFI working in her village and she used it smartly. First she got trained in the Self Help Group (SHG ) initiative where she learnt all about making fancy costume jewelry and updated herself on the latest styles and trends women in Calcutta prefer. After that she used the micro loan to get the raw material required and started producing jewelry. She sold her hand- made jewelry to sellers in Calcutta and made a decent profit. And then she employed other women from her village in her business as well.
It may sound corny, but micro loans and other micro financing have actually changed India. The success rate of SHGs’ who have availed of micro loans is so high that it makes loan sharks look bad. The repayment of micro loans has been estimated to be more than 97%, which is very good by any standards. As support for micro loans keep increasing, so does their influence.
Posted in Micro Loan Success Stories | 
Tags: india, loan, MFI, micro loan, micro loan india, micro loans in india, Micro Loans India, Microloan, Microloans in India, SHG | 
No Comments »
About Micro Loans In India
The truth about Micro Loans in India
When the government introduced various initiatives for starting Self Help Groups (SHG’s) in the 1990’s, a lot of people were skeptical as to how it would be possible for poor women to find the money to start such businesses. Micro loans came to the rescue. The government started allowing Micro Financing Institutions (MFI’s) to make micro loans available to poor rural women who had no verifiable credit history. Though the amount available through a micro loan was not big, it was enough to start SHG’s dealing with home- based, small- scale businesses.
In Punjab, using the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozagar Yojana (SGSY), one of the programs brought out by the government, rural women were given assistance with how they could start their own SHGs’. They were given vocational training in how to make stuffed toys, do embroidery, stitching and knitting tasks, etc. The Mukstar district in the state of Punjab has presently 330 SHGs’ who have been helped by this program. What’s more, the women are also made to understand how they could avail of a micro loan from an MFI.
The success of Kuldeep Kaur, one of the women who have taken part in the government initiative and now runs her own SHG shows clearly on her face. She is a differently- abled woman who learnt the tricks of the trade and finally started her own SHG employing other women. She availed of a micro loan which gave her the initial capital investment she required.
Micro loans in India truly deserve the accolades it gets.