This op-ed was submitted by Suresh Pramar, and is a user post. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of TC-I, but we feel that it is important to cultivate opinions from all sides.

India like the rest of the world has not escaped the impacts of the current downturn. The sudden rush in retrenchment and forced salary cuts is an indication of the prevailing financial meltdown the result of corporate greed and irresponsibility. It needs to be emphasized that not all in the corporate sector are to blame. While middle level and junior staff have worked long hours expecting rewards for their efforts top management have given themselves unearned bonuses.

What is needed now is leadership with vision to steer the country out of this situation. A vision that speaks to small and medium-sized businesses and at the same time one that attends to the pressing requirements of our community.

India fortunately has an active and growing social enterprises sector which is engaged in delivering the much required services to the community. Many of these social entrepreneurs have earned distinction and awards for the good work they have done and continue to do in the service of the people.
Among these is Dr Harish Hande whose company SELCO, using solar technology, has lit up hundreds of thousands of households with ‘clean’ lighting. About 65 to 75 percent of the beneficiaries are small farmers who earn between Rs 100 to 200 a day After reaching 80,000 clients across Karnataka and Kerala SELCO moved into Gujarat.

Solar electrification has brought in brought about a dramatic change in the social and economic lives of the beneficiaries. It has helped children secure better academic results since they can now study at night. It has increased livelihoods and incomes of night-time vegetable vendors. Additionally it has ended the use of dirty and dangerous kerosene lamps. For the environment, the 80,000 systems deployed avoid emissions of approximately 24,000 tones of CO2 equivalent per year that would have been released by the use of kerosene lamps.

Dr Hande’s efforts have earned him the ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ 2007 by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Nand and Jeet Khemka Foundation Recently SELCO won the FT-ArcelorMittal ‘Boldness in Business’ award in the CSR category.

In Ahmedabad Rajendra Joshi’s Saath works with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to ensure that slum residents receive basic sanitation, water and drainage services at the household level and paved roads and street lights at a community level. It has created mechanisms through which the urban poor can save and pay the user charges.

Saath is also demonstrating models of public-private partnership where the urban poor are key stakeholders. It tailored profit-based solutions for electricity supply in Ahmedabad’s slums by altering the user fee, increasing business volumes and bringing in government contribution. As a result, 200,000 slum households today pay for electricity with the business house, Torrent Power, reporting a 30% increase in profits

In Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi and Rajasthan. Arbind Singh’s Social Enterprise, Nidan is helping to build profitable businesses and ‘people’s organizations’ which are led by asset less, informal workers. Nidan, over the past years has launched a range of cooperatives, Self Help Groups (SHGs), trade unions, and individual and community businesses These have positioned unorganized workers as legitimate competitors in globalizing markets of India.

In 12 years, Nidan has launched and promoted 20 independent businesses and organizations that are governed and owned through shares by 60,000 urban and rural poor members. The enterprises include 4618 SHGS, 75 market committees, 19 co-operatives, two societies and one company—all envisioned and led by a complex of waste workers, rag pickers, vegetable vendors, construction labourers, domestic helpers, micro-farmers, street traders and other marginalized occupation groups.

The economic downturn is also hurting many of such enterprises. Social enterprises, however are not seeking charity; they want the support of business to complement their roles Business can play a proactive role in creating and promoting social enterprises. This they can do be creating social intrapreneurs within the organisation who, with the blessing of management, seek opportunities for their companies while using the core skills and resources of their employers as the basis for their projects.

Social Intrapreneurs are creating and delivering new products, services and business models. These not only generate business value but address some of society’s most pressing challenges. They compel their companies to look out of their comfort zone to see the strategic risks and opportunities that exist beyond the purview of traditional business units.

John Elkington, founder and chief entrepreneur at SustainAbility, believes companies should try to give employees space and permission to think about social innovations, and then mentor, coach and support the most promising intrapreneurs and initiatives. “They might need to select projects with the coldness of a venture capitalist and build a portfolio of projects with different levels of risk, accepting that some of them are bound to fail,” he says.

To help to strengthen social intrapreneurs to counter the present recession Governments can also pitch in to fund part of the costs of social intrapreneurs This will provide the company a new source of income during the downturn, the community gets the benefit of much needed services and products..

It is now generally agreed that we need both the social entrepreneurs and social intrapreneurs. While ensuring societal change, social intrapreneurs are also necessary for a company’s survival in an environment of rising expectations of the role of business in society.

Start Up Story covers a social enterprise, Matchbox Solutions, that addresses technology and process improvements for critical business segments.  One of these solutions focuses on the agribusiness supply chain through eFarm:

eFarm is a Farm-to-Home supply chain Platform for procuring and delivering farm based produce in a transparent, economical and efficient manner.

eFarm ties in farmers, intermediaries, logistics providers, distributors, small time retailers, all the way upto your local road side vendor into a single chain backed up best of breed information systems to deliver fresh, clean, low priced farm produce.

The approach involves aggregating demand, matching orders to suppliers, and localized distribution through NGOs and SHGs.  The step that stands out as was  different from the status quo is the advanced ordering – customers actually fill out an order form predicting how much of each item they will need.  Many families pick up their fresh vegetables every day or every other day, so advanced ordering requires a shift in consumer behavior. However, the process does allow for walk ins and pick ups directly from handcarts, in addition to home drop offs.

To learn more about how this supply chain solution works, take a look at this visual explanation: How eFarm Works

This week has had no shortage of announcements of accepting nominations for some competitions and the unveiling of winners from others. Today, IndiaPRwire reports that the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, Schwab Foundation, and UNDP has picked finalists for the 2008 Social Entrepreneurship of the Year Award.

The Award recognizes individuals who offer the most innovative and sustainable solutions to society’s impending social problems. The ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ Award over the last few years has risen to prominence among social entrepreneurs with applicant’s immensely valuing the benefits the award brings. The steady increase in the number of nominations filed for this award is proof of it growing significance

Here are the three finalists:

• The Executive Director of NIDAN, Arbind Singh.  According to the Khemka Foundation site:

Founded by Arbind Singh in 1995, Nidan builds profitable businesses and ‘people’s organizations’ that are led by assetless, informal workers. A range of cooperatives, Self Help Groups (SHGs), trade unions, and individual and community businesses launched by Nidan have positioned unorganized workers as legitimate competitors in globalizing markets of India. Nidan works in Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi and Rajasthan.

• Founder of PlanetRead, Brij Kothari. Aishwarya wrote about Mr Kothari back in June and discussed his “same language subtitling” (SLS) tool. Refer to his post for more information, and the Khemka Foundation’s description below.

Using the simple tool of Same Language Subtitling (SLS) on popular song-based television programs, PlanetRead is sharpening the literacy skills of an estimated 200 million ‘literates’ or ‘neoliterates’ who have weak reading and comprehension skills, despite having attended at least primary school. By superimposing subtitles on visuals in the ’same’ language as the audio, Brij ensures that reading becomes a byproduct of entertainment already consumed by the audience.

A joint venture of PlanetRead and IIM Ahmedabad, SLS has combined the tremendous reach of India’s national broadcasting agency, Doordarshan, with the enormous appeal of film songs, to give lifelong reading practice to early literate persons.

• Executive Director of Swayam Shikshan Prayog, Prema Gopalan. The PR wire site describes SSP’s work:

SSP is launching profitable rural businesses powered by partnerships between large corporations, like BP Energy and village women in disaster-affected areas. Founded by Prema Gopalan in 1994, SSP has organized 60,000 rural women into social networks through which new retail businesses are opening up in bottom-of-the-pyramid markets. The businesses-clean energy products, organic goods, health and financial services-have led to cumulative incomes of INR 2.3 crores for village women entrepreneurs.

We’ll keep you updated on who wins the award, after it is announced this weekend at the India Economic Summit.

Update on November 18: Arbind Singh was declared the winner. Congrats!

Madura Micro Finance has received an investment by Unitus Equity Fund to ramp up their offerings to women self help groups (SHGs) in rural India.

Madura Micro Finance will use UEF’s funding to increase its management bandwidth and institutional capacity as well as continue to expand its customer base, which is comprised primarily of women.  The firm’s central financing product is a group loan to self help groups (SHGs) which are formed and trained through its partner organization, Microcredit Foundation of India. These SHGs undergo training in good financial practice and business skills before being considered eligible for MMFLs loans. Madura does not post to the MIX database. It reported USD 35 million in disbursements in 2007, and an SHG member base of 500,000.

[Source: Microcapital.org]

India Post has inked an agreement with National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to facilitate micro-credit to women-run Self Help Groups (SHG) in eight states and north eastern states.

In this strategic partnership, India Post will lend the unparalleled reach it has gained into India’s remote villages and the credibility as a reliable family insurer through its various life insurance schemes to provide a big boost to NABARD for achieving its purpose of “facilitating credit flow for promotion and development of agriculture and integrated rural development.”

The latest agreement is inked after the resounding success of the pilot project that was implemented in Tamil Nadu as highlighted in Microcapital.org

This project was first implemented in 2006 as a pilot project in a number of post offices in two districts of Tamil Nadu…It was extended to three additional districts and all post offices in these five districts are currently participSo far, 165 SHGs have received these loans, for a total loan disbursement of Rs 1.35 million (USD 29 thousand). Additionally, 2,900 SHGs have been formed to create credit linkages with 2000 post offices in nine divisions of the state.

A presentation in India Rural Business Summit organized by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) provides finer details on the pilot’s working model, and metrics.

On the whole, India Post’s credibility among the rural and urban poor as one of the least corrupt, and hence the most reliable government organization, extensive reach, and success on a smaller  scale implementation seems to leave only the possible problems due to scaling up to worry about in this initiative.

[Story Source: Livemint] [More information: Ejeevika Website]

A startup incubated by Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI), a society established under IIT-Madras,  plans to connect people living in rural areas with job opportunities presented by urban explosion – and make money out of it.

ejeevika HR Pvt Ltd, started by Richa Pandey Mishra, follows a simple business model:

Identify entrepreneurs through village council heads, non-profits and self-help groups(SHGs)

Offer them a franchise – a franchise requires one to invest on a couple of personal computers, a broadband connection and power backup – which entails an investment of around Rs 50000

Franchisees identify potential candidates who are trained by ejeevika as per clients’ requirements

Bridge the labor shortage in high growth industries by providing skills to rural youth, increasing employment opportunities in the rural space and thereby increasing individual and community income.

At present, ejeevika is imparting training on retail sailes to youth in the districts of Tirivallur and Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu. Going by its founder’s claims, ejeevika plans to train and find jobs for some 200,000 people in the next couple of years through a network of around 1,000 franchisees in the rural districts of India. An idea like ejeevika is a potent way to tap and channelise the potential of rural youth.

At the same time, there are a few questions we need to raise and find answers for. Last year was a landmark year for rural to urban migration – for the first time urban population overtook that in rural areas. What is and should be the ‘policy of the government’ and ‘our thinking as citizens’ – is such large scale urban migration desirable? Especially when most of our cities do not plan for such an inflow. Will urban migration have an affect on agricultural production? Will it lead to a reduction in our green cover?

Self Help Groups, or SHGs as they are better known, have come to be accepted in India as a potent means of empowering people who are suck on the wrong side of the poverty line – with special emphasis on rural women. SHGs, typically, consist of a group of 15-20 people who come together with the objective of creating a financial cushion in times of individual or collective exigencies. SHGs also promote independent thinking and inculcate a sense of responsibility since the money and effort involved belong to the members themselves.

Assam is the latest example where SHGs are fostering a silent revolution, as reported by livemint.

The primary aim of setting up SHGs was to address the problem of rural unemployment, remove disillusionment among youth and bring them back to mainstream from the path of militancy, he said. Moreover, gradually the young and educated unemployed rural population are equipping themselves to take up income generating activities by organising themselves into SHGs, Gogoi said.

The article quotes a survey conducted by Nanda Talukdar Foundation to point out that Upper Assam has benefited more from the state government initiative even though the actual intent was to benefit Lower Assam. Further reading of the article brings to front the need for increased planning and study of demographics to ensure that resources are targeted properly and benefit more people with lesser wastage.

While you are still at this post, you may want to read this report on “SHGs in India”. Though a couple of years old, it is educating nevertheless.

Editor’s Note: This post was a contribution of one of our readers, Aishwarya Mishra. Aishwarya has been working in the software industry for close to 4 years. He is passionate about writing and more importantly, working on social issues. You can read his personal views at http://wheredoiblog.blogspot.com and help in his efforts on http://targetingtheroots.blogspot.com

If you want to write a post on ThinkChange India, drop us a word at info@thinkchangeindia.org

Recently, traditional income generating activities, specifically those associated with self help groups (SHGs), have gained acclaim as effective tools for poverty alleviation. The assumption is that if, for example, Sunita, a woman from an agricultural community in Gujarat, learns how to make papad, she will then have the skills necessary to sustain a productive livelihood, and hence, support her family. Typically, Sunita, who now knows how to make papad, will be part of a collective such as an SHG, and together, these women will produce papad in bulk to be sold on the market. So far, so good, right?

But what if the demand for papad in Sunita’s region plummets? Or what if the prices for the raw materials or the equipment required to produce papad spike upwards? Or, even more fundamentally, what if the market for papad simply does not exist? How will Sunita transition from papad making to another entrepreneurial activity when she (as well as her fellow SHG members) have been trained only to produce papads?

This is precisely where skills-based income generation activities falter – when women are required to draw upon a larger, more holistic skill set in order to transition to another, more profitable business venture. Because these types of trainings teach women only how to produce a specific product, rather than how to assess market needs and then produce, women like Sunita are poorly equipped to tackle market fluctuations or competition. In other words, training Sunita with the skills required to produce papad is effectively the same as teaching her how to read / write her name, but neglecting to teach her the remainder of the alphabet. How can we then expect Sunita to read a book, unless, of course, she teaches herself?

What is required is a paradigm shift away from skills-based, production oriented income generation to training on how to think like an entrepreneur. In other words, Sunita should be asking herself questions like, “What are the needs of the market?” and “How can I meet those needs?” before seeking to learn a specific skill set. This type of thinking turns the traditional income generation model on its head, as it places women in the position to negotiate the terms of their engagement with the market, rather than being pigeon-holed into a narrowly defined skill-set that is unsustainable over time.

The progression, then, is towards greater self-reliance and sustainability. Sunita is no longer hoping that the market for papads remains stable, but rather, is positioning herself strategically so as to maximize on the intersection between the needs of the market and her own skill set. Even though this type of training requires more time and inputs, it is the most sustainable, as it empowers women to understand their relationship with the market, and hence, has the potential to generate true entrepreneurs.

If you are interested in this type of training, I highly recommend you read “Market Oriented Value Enhancement,” a training manual published in collaboration with the Best Practices Foundation (BPF) precisely with the vision of empowering the landless, asset-poor to become entrepreneurs, not simply skilled labourers. The training manual argues that the “traditional business approaches of both the NGOs and government are outdated, impractical, and frequently, ineffective”, for many reasons, summarized below:

1) The focus is on skill enhancement, typically encouraging participants to enter production, which is an increasingly untenable position for small entrepreneurs.

2) Skill training is typically capital intensive, requiring expenditures on machinery, factories, and raw materials to move forward.

3) Skill enhancement that is limited to a single product, requires large capital commitments and makes lateral mobility – moving from product to product – virtually impossible.

4) “Is there a market?” “Who will buy it?” These questions are central to any business but simply not asked, i.e., participants have committed time, effort, capital, and hope into a business venture without even knowing if people want their product.

By shifting focus from labour-oriented skills to market-oriented knowledge, women are given the tools to assess the needs of their own communities, and develop a business model that is adaptable, and withstands market pressures, rather than succumbing to it. Currently, this model is being tested in five villages – Channapur, Gabbur, Kotur, Mandihal, Mugad, and Hubli-Dharwad, Karnataka.

Today, Microcapital.org published the second part of their “Pioneers in Microfinance” series, in which they continued their interview of a pioneer in microfinance, Aloysius P. Fernandez, Executive Director MYRADA and Chairman of the Board of Microfinance Institution Sanghamithra Rural Financial Services.   To refresh your memory on Part One of this series, read this earlier post by Vinay.

The interview continues where it left off in Part One by outlining both the impetus and the process involved in establishing linkages between the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Self-Help Affinity Groups (SAG).  In the interview, Fernandez describes how MYRADA attempted to implement changes on a policy level by approaching RBI and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) regarding the lending process:

In 1989, he [NABARD President and CEO P. R. Nayak] asked me, “Now, what policy change do you want?” I said, “Allow the banks to give loans without asking for the purpose. Why are you so particular about giving based on viable loans and unit costs?” They would give loans for sheep. There would have to be 20 female sheep and one male sheep, so that was supposed to be a viable unit. But, if you give such a big unit to a single woman, she has to leave all her other work and look after this. So, in order to survive she will sell two sheep. There goes your viable unit. We found that 60 percent of the recovery didn’t come from the asset, so why are you wasting your time? Let people decide [how to use their loans].

Fernandez then goes on to talk about the proliferation of NGOs based on the SHG model in India, and their perceived limitations, including potential for growth in the future:

 What has happened in the last five or six years is a number of NGOs have started lending money. There is one microfinance institution starting everyday in India. I think microfinance has a big role to play in India, but let’s make a distinction. One: let us have microfinance for people who need it. It can be for-profit, fast-growing, have good substantial interest rates and have good profits; no problem. But if you want to have microfinance in the context of poverty, then there are certain limitations. One is that it has to have reasonably affordable interest rates because the investment in agricultural and rural areas doesn’t give you a very high return. Two: it has to be in the context of development or in the context of organizations lowering the risk of development. Therefore, if you are looking at it in the context of poverty, you can’t look at microfinance as a single bullet. It has to be embedded in a much broader framework, and it has to be tempered by social concern. At the same time, microfinance institutions involved in poverty can be financially sustainable, as Sanghamithra Rural Financial Services (Sanghamithra) has proved.

Finally, Fernandez spoke about the challenges faced by his organization, including trends for the future.  I found the following line to be especially fascinating, particularly in the context of setting a sustainable, viable development agenda that enables poor populations to become self-sufficient:  (more after the break…)

This was the biggest discovery: that traditionally you build on people’s strengths and not on people’s needs. If you make analyses of needs, you develop a dependency relationship between them and you.

Lastly, he re-visited the prior theme of the rapid rise of SHGs in India, and emphasized the need for improving the quality of services provided: 

The biggest challenge today is the quality of self-help groups (SHGs). In India, it became a national policy in 2000, and then the quality declined because they started forming groups without giving target-oriented training. But, of course, you have 3.2 million of them in India today. Now, we have to work for quality all over here.

Probably one of the most significant insights gleaned from this article was Fernandez’s assertion that in order for a any development movement to be sustainable (and also to avoid the destructive nature of jealousy), it must be grounded in something bigger than one’s self.  Vanity and ego-centrism must be shed for a larger goal, which in his case, involved an extensive partnership with a governmental entity – NABARD. 

Two weeks ago I wrote about James Surowiecki’s article in the New Yorker that brought forward the inherent limitations of microfinance to actually generate a substantial number of jobs in a developing country. Since then it seems as if I was not the only one (surprise surprise) to take notice of Surowieki’s conclusions and it has even brought pioneers like Acumen Fund’s CEO Jacqueline Novogratz into the argumentative fray.

Novogratz gave some credit to Surowiecki’s argument that not everyone in society is an entrepreneur and that in fact most people simply want a predictable, stable job with defined roles. Novogratz, however, distinguished her stance through her anectdotal experience with women’s access to credit and how throughout her experience they have overwhelmingly been favorable towards it. She says that this desire for credit provides the rest of us with critical lessons on how to address poverty.

However, the desire for credit on its own in no way makes someone an entrepreneur. Every teenager in America has an affinity for credit, but just because they are willing to spend that money somewhere does not make them some sort of innovator. Likewise, Surowieki’s argument highlights that for the most part microloans are not utilized for business expansion, but rather they help tide businesses over during rougher times, a la a bridge financing round. These funds like simple credit cards are used to cover funds that someone has already spent before — not towards future capital investments. It is that ability to reinvest ones funds towards scalability and expansion that is truly entrepreneurial.

Novogratz to a certain extent recognizes this limitation and reframes microfinance as one tool of many to help the poor.

But we’ve learned how to deliver at least one product to the poor, and we have an unprecedented opportunity not only to build larger businesses that employ people but also to deliver other critical products — healthcare, clean water, housing and alternative energy — to the poor in ways they can access and afford.

In fact, Acumen’s primary focus is specifically to find those social ventures that do exhibit potential economies of scale and to provide them with the capital they need to grow and actually become a viable business that hits the missing middle.  One example is LifeSpring Hospitals, whom Acumen recently provided seed capital to expand its hospital network. When we speak of the missing middle here, we are primarily looking to those businesses that the developed world take for granted, like supermarkets, clothing stores, etc. — the types of businesses that employ numerous people and can sometimes leverage economies of scale to reach more customers.

But this funding gap can be difficult to navigate and assess. What sort of criteria must be used to sift out those enterprises most suited for scaling up via social venture capital infusions? What are the metrics that must be applied to reach this conclusion? Acumen has developed an in house metric called BACO, or the best alternative charitable option. This metric operates as a comparative tool to assess which ventures are most likely to be a successful small or medium size enterprise or SMEs. Moving one level up, Xigi.net has developed a social capital index that is intended to monitor and assess the performance of funds like Acumen themselves.

Such measurement tools are crucial as money has begun to flow into the SME space. One effort that has received particular attention is the $17 million dollar SME fund that Google.org with others has launched targeting India. But where will this money go, and how can we be sure it will not be wasted? It is here, where I believe that microfinance instiutions and their clients provide the greatest value to the development community. Beyond the obvious benefits earned by the client herself, microborrowers also serve in effect as beta testers for new and creative ways to address complex problems. Metrics like BACO and Xigi.net’s SCI will assist in this effort, but in the end we will have to accept that there will be times when an investment may pressure a microbusiness to try to expand only to result in failure. While it may seem callous to view individuals in this light, I do not see another alternative to an efficient yet organic mode of development.

The shift away from pure debt financing to capital investments, as evidenced by Google.org’s new fund, will help this process as failed attempts to expand will not result in the financial ruin of that individual. With venture capital like infusions, the possibility of failure becomes ingrained in the initial investing analysis.  A post on Nextbillion.net by Nitin Rao speaks to this. Rao argues that it is unfair to state that microfinance does not lead to business expansion, since the present size of the MFIs  does not lend them to being accesses to capital, but instead specifically to the discrete poverty alleviation of that specific borrower.

According to a study by SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India), loans from MFIs/group funds are used mostly for productive purposes (as high as 80% in the Grameen and Individual model and 60% for SHG members). With over 90% MFIs serving less than 10,000 clients, it appears likely that larger microfinance institutions will lend for productive purposes – and smaller SHGs will be relatively flexible about the use of capital. When I wrote to SKS, they insisted that the MFI only lends for income generation and by the loan utilization check verifies it too.

But this again speaks to my issue that microfinance is good at alleviating poverty for those individuals involved but at this juncture it is uncertain that it can provide more. Most people invested in addressing development did not go into it with the utlimate goal of simply elminating poverty. No, our goals are much loftier than that as many of us want to figure out ways to enable entire communities and moreover nations to raise their aggregate standards of living to that where they are competitive players in the global economy.

That is not to say that microfinance is not a viable or amazing tool at society’s disposal. But it does bring to light the fact of the dangers of having an overly rosy perspective of it. One area where microfinance can and should have a significant role, however, is in its integration with the traditional banking sector. One of the most difficult aspects of the missing middle challenge is finding these potential entrpreneurs in the first place. A great way to do that is to tap into the one commonality that every social entrepreneur shares — the need for funding. Suggestions have been made to better coordinate between MFIs and traditional banks to empower rural individuals and provide them access to credit. Amdist the recent loan waiver for farmers controversy, the CFO of SKS Microfinance had the following to offer (From VC Circle):

In an interview to VC Circle, S Dilliraj, CFO of India’s leading microfinance institution, says that “farmers need income for survival and not debt relief”. According to him, the long-term solution to this problem could be closer collaboration and synergy between banks and MFIs for rural lending. And also take the local moneylender along instead of banishing him from the system.

A corollary to this would be the development of a financial network to identify and communicate with potential entrepreneurs throughout the country. This is not to say that microfinance should not play other roles, but in my opinion we need to look for ways it can evolve as an institution and practice. The future of development, particularly in India with its massive population and innovation hubs, is in the small and medium size businesses. Harnessing microfinance to get us there seems like a ’small’ step along the process, but it is one that may result in macro-effects.