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How Pro-Poor Is User-Owned Microfinance? Class, Gender and Group Dynamics in Self-Help Groups, South India |
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K. Kalpana |
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This paper explores the challenges to pro-poor practice in Self- Help Group (SHG)- based microfinance by examining group dynamics in SHGs through the lens of negotiations between promoter agencies and groups, on the one hand, and among group members, on the other. The paper argues that organizational structure of the SHG model of microfinance allows women of rural poor households considerable autonomy in choosing the terms of group financial transactions vis-a-vis promoter and financing agencies. This flexibility is an important factor, given that the current microfinance crisis is, to a large extent, about the power exercise by financial provider agencies over the poor. However, there can be no unqualified celebration of decentralized functioning by SHGs since intra- group dynamics are underpinned by social power relations as reflected in the vulnerability of poorer members within SHGs to co-members and of group members as a collective to group leaders. |
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