One of my favorite things about this job is going to the field: meeting with MFI managers, touring microfinance branches and seeing women borrowers taking loans and making payments.
I don't head out there everyday, but when I do go, I'm reminded why I left investment banking.
It feels good to be in the field.
Irrespective of the complex legal structuring, high-profile personalities and intense deal-making that seem to accompany investments in Indian microfinance today, this is still where the real action happens - in the hands and heads of these women borrowers and the loan officers that serve them.
Today I visited a typical "Grameen-style Microfinance" center meeting, which involves several groups of 5 or more women borrowers who have self-selected each other in joint-liability groups (meaning each person has agreed to guarantee the others' loans, thus creating a joint incentive for all to repay).
The agenda for one of these center meetings often looks like this:
- The field officer arrives at the meeting site.
- 5 minutes before the meeting starts the women each give their individual loan repayments to their selected group leaders who count the money and give it to the field officer.
- Attendance is taken.
- The women recite an oath, promising that they will follow the rules of the organization and repay their loans.
- The field officer gives an oath, that he/she will not cheat or steal from them.
- The field officer counts the money collected from the group leaders.
- After physically tallying the money and verbally confirming it, the field officer signs the borrowers' passbooks or loan cards acknowledging that they were present and have indeed paid.
An experienced field officer can run an efficient meeting like this in 15-20 minutes.
I was with someone today who had been reading about microfinance for years but had never before been to one of these center meetings.
As we walked down the road after the meeting, he seemed in a pleasant state of shock, so excited to finally witness this simple but profound act: credit discipline superior to that of the world's rich, manifested by the world's poor.
"I know," I said, "It's pretty cool, enough to make you quit your desk job."
Pleasant surprise. Your own Blog on Microfinance.
Looking at the quantum of your research, think you are the right person to give me a run down on the differences between grameen style micro finance, SHGs and the so called hybrid model followed by MFIs in AP.
You can tutor me on a rainy monsoon day when you can't get out of
the house :-).
Posted by: Hina | July 15, 2007 at 01:04 AM
Glad you found it.
Happy to talk SHGs, JLGs, OERs and other MF alphabet soup sometime. I think you also may find Sakshi to be a good resource.
Leave for Africa on Thurs. But I'm sure I'll be back in Bombay soon. Had a great trip there this weekend.
Posted by: Mark | July 16, 2007 at 12:13 AM
Have a good trip. Not sure if interiors of Mozambique will be fun, but I am sure that it'll be a great learning experience.
You can treat me to MFI jargon next time you happen to come to Mumbai. Look forward to meeting Sakshi in Hyd.
Posted by: Hina | July 16, 2007 at 07:49 AM