While at the Microfinance India Summit last week, I spent a substantial amount of my time rushing to record the data and recommendations suggested in the presenters PowerPoints. It turns out that this was a foolish waste of time. As promised, the organizers of the conference have made available online nearly every presentation. I suggest taking a look at the following:
- Suman Bery, of the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), presented on the Council’s findings from a large panel study they have been doing on the SHG Bank Linkage Programme. As Mr. Bery acknowledged, the conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt because NCAER were not able to have a true control group to which those participating in the program could be compared.
- I have a soft spot for witty old patrician British men, so I pretty much eat up anything said by Professor Malcom Harper, former chairman of BASIX and author of “What’s Wrong with Microfinance.” He presented on the future of SHGs in India. He truly seemed confused about where the movement was headed, claiming that he could both see SHGs dying out because clients preferred joint liability MFIs or on the opposite end of the spectrum, that they could slowly morph into cooperative banks similar to what we see in
- CGAP Senior Microfinance Specialist Syed Hashemi’s PowerPoint on “Graduating the Poorest” was not only informative but extremely aesthetically pleasing. He discusses the theory behind ultra poor programs and the various locations they are piloting the program. CMF, along with professors from MIT, are evaluating the “ultra poor program” being run by Bandhan in
- And of course, you have to check out the presentation by former Centre for Micro Finance Executive Director Annie Duflo, in which she discusses the results from various studies that CMF and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) have conducted on the impact of microfinance.
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