MICRO-FINANCE PROGRAMMES : GROWTH, ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

The notion of Microf inance received an increased nnomentum in the after the Wor ld Summit for Social Development which was held in Copenhagen in 1995. The Copenhagen Summit emphasized the importance of improving access to credit for small producers, landless farmers, and rural women. But when we study about the credit for poverty alleviation, some questions needs to be answered. Is the mechanism of micro-f inance viable in India? Microf inance offers savings, credit and insurance services to the poor especially rural women. However, it has been observed that in India women generally have limited or no control over their money, because husband or male family member makes all the important decisions in the family including economic decisions. This paper focuses on the exper ience of Micro-f inance programmes in the Indian context. The paper portrays the limited access of credit to Indian rural women. The paper undertakes the study of various formal and informal f inance institutions' activities in India such as Rural Bank, SEWA (Self Employed Women's Association) etc. The paper concludes with the belief that women's empowerment needs to be a counterpart of every governmental policy and empowerment cannot be assumed to be an outcome of one single programme. |t must be incorporated and acknowledged in the planning procedure and economic policies. M i c r o F i n a n c e P r o g r a m m e s : G r o w t h , I s s u e s a n d C h a l l e n g e s

choices. This process not only includes resources but also decision making capacity, power to negotiate and ability to achieve the outcomes of this process (Kabeer 1999).
This paper focuses on the experience of f\/Iicro-finance programmes in the Indian context.  consumption. This may be another serious problem because in that case men will become supporters and sympathizers of women's financial activities but in reality they were thinking about them self (Mayoux, 2000). Access to finance also changes the period of working hours between men and women in the same house or in the economic activity.
Microfinance assists women but on the other hand it also increases the problem of working hours. Financial System In Rural India: It has been observed that in India that the development and reforms of the banking system remained isolated and was not made part of a broader socio-economic transformation in the countryside. In India land and agriculture reforms were explicit and have no direct connection with the reform of financial sector. Land remained inequitably distributed, and inequities in the access to credit followed the inequities in land distribution.
This was because borrowers needed land as collateral in order to secure access to credit (Swamy 1979). Howeverthe Government has taken several initiatives to strengthen the institutional rural credit system but in practice these never became visible.
It is mandatory in India that commercial banks are required to ensure that 40% of total credit is provided to the priority sectors out of which 18% in the form of direct finance to agriculture and 25% to priority

Example of Grameen Bank
In the case of Grameen Bank of Bangladesh the defining criteria for the microfinance projects are the size of loans and the targeted population, particularly women, from low-income households.
These loans are generally offered without any collateral. This programme is based on innovative financial practices (Chavan and Ramkumar 2002). In this case to obtain loans.  (Papa et al, 2006). The Grameen Bank type system also contains some weak point and limitations. Grameen Bank has not oriented itself towards mobilizing rural people's resources. It has a repayment system of 50 weekly equal installments and that is not practical because rural women do not have a stable work and revenues source. Pressure for high repayment may drive rural women to money lenders that may create another problem as Micro-finance is a time consuming process (Tiwari and Fahad 2004).

Example of Regional Rural Banks:
To Organizations (NGO) and Regional Rural Banks.
Micro-finance, by its very nature, cannot attempt to meet the full range of the demand for credit in the whole rural area but whatever it will cover that will be bonus for development process. NGO linked micro-finance is, however, expected to incur more transactions costs and achieve a lower repayment record than the formal banking sector in respect of small-scale, short-term loans but for the social development, economic gains must be ignored up to some extent. Regional Rural Banks can also play a very crucial role and they can do well to work with local governments and self-help groups for the development of rural areas.