Proceedings of the National Workshop on Identifying the Weaknesses in the Structure and Operations of the Rural Credit Institutions, held at Bhubaneswar during 7-8 January 2005; with special reference to Orissa, State, India.

Beyond Micro-Credit sets out how Indian Micro-Finance Initiatives are combining micro-finance with a wide range of development goals, these include not only poverty alleviation through providing savings, credit and insurance services but also promoting livelihoods, empowering women, building people's organizations and changing institutions.

Annotation This book examines the current level and pattern of access to finance for India's rural households, evaluates various approaches for delivering financial services, analyzes what lies behind the lack of adequate financial access, and identifies what it would take to improve access to finance.

A key to understanding why some rural development policies succeed and some fail is found in this book. The editors contend that established economic models are inadequate to interpret the behavior of rural markets and nonmarket institutions. This book investigates economic institutions and contractual arrangements in credit, labor, and land markets and analyzes their implications for the behavior of the rural sector. Drawing on 15 short case studies, five overview and nine theoretical chapters explore some of the most pressing problems facing developing countries: how to promote financial integration of the rural sector, how to rationalize the use of land and water, and how to design and administer tax and transfer policies. The book contributes to theory, empirical methodology, and the solution of concrete policy questions.

Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World is the first comprehensive exploration of key emerging issues facing developing-country agriculture today, from rapid urbanization to rural transformation to climate change. In this four-part volume, top experts offer the latest research in the field of agricultural development. Using new lenses to examine today’s biggest challenges, contributors address topics such as nutrition and health, gender and household decision-making, agrifood value chains, natural resource management, and political economy. The book also covers most developing regions, providing a critical global perspective at a time when many pressing challenges extend beyond national borders. Tying all this together, Agricultural Development explores policy options and strategies for developing sustainable agriculture and reducing food insecurity and malnutrition. The changing global landscape combined with new and better data, technologies, and understanding means that agriculture can and must contribute to a wider range of development outcomes than ever before, including reducing poverty, ensuring adequate nutrition, creating strong food value chains, improving environmental sustainability, and promoting gender equity and equality. Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World, with its unprecedented breadth and scope, will be an indispensable resource for the next generation of policymakers, researchers, and students dedicated to improving agriculture for global wellbeing.

`This is a "must read" for anyone interested in value chain finance.---Kenneth Shwedel, Agricultural Economist --Book Jacket.

Until recently the use of agricultural credit as a developmental tool seemed clear and straightforward. Most concerned people believed that increases in the volume of cheap credit were necessary to boost agricultural production, and that the rural poor could be brought into the mainstream of development through supervised credit programs. It seemed that certain ideal types of rural credit institutions offered the promise of meeting farmers' credit needs, and that experience in the industrialized countries with cooperatives and specialized agricultural finance institutions could be effectively transplanted to low-income countries. This collection of readings highlights facets of rural financial markets that have often been neglected in discussions of agricultural credit in developing countries. It moves beyond a narrow concern with the simple provision of credit to a broad consideration of the performance of rural financial markets and of ways to improve the quality and range of financial services for low-income farmers. It reflects new thinking on the design, administration, evaluation and policy framework of rural finance and credit programs in developing countries.