Publisher's Synopsis
Financial services are critical if the poor have to be enabled to leverage their initiative, accelerating the process of building incomes, assets, and economic security. However conventional financial institutions seldom lend down-market to serve the needs of low-income families and/or women-headed households. An efficient and viable credit-delivery system catering to a large section of the poor is still a distant dream. In the past few decades, microcredit has been used throughout the Third World to promote grassroots entrepreneurship. Microcredit's success overseas has caught the attention of Indian policy-makers, business leaders, and charitable organizations. They see it as a way to reduce the widespread incidence of poverty and unemployment in India
