Discusses the role of the groups in encouraging rural women to become active in village affairs and benefits for the poorest. Examines the groups' financial management and financial performance. Considers implications for Indian microfinance and the global growth of the sector.

Contributed papers presented earlier in a conference.

The major form of microfinance in India is that based on women's Self Help Groups (SHGs), which are small groups of 10--20 members. These groups collect savings from their members and provide loans to them. However, unlike most accumulating savings and credit associations (ASCAs) found in several countries, these groups also obtain loans from banks and on-lend them to their members. By 2003, over 700,000 groups had obtained over Rs.20 billion (US$425 million) in loans from banks benefiting more than 10 million people. Delinquencies on these loans are reported to be less than 5 percent. Savings in these groups is estimated to be at least Rs.8 billion (US$170 million). Despite these considerable achievements, sustainability of the SHGs has been suspect because several essential services required by the SHGs are provided free or at a significantly subsidized cost by organizations that have developed these groups. A few promoter organizations have, however, developed federations of SHGs that provide these services and others that SHG members need, but which SHGs cannot feasibly provide. Using a case study approach, Nair explores the merits and constraints of federating. Three SHG federations that provide a wide range of services are studied. The findings suggest that federations could help SHGs become institutionally and financially sustainable because they provide the economies of scale that reduce transaction costs and make the provision of these services viable. But their sustainability is constrained by several factors--both internal, related to the federations themselves, and external, related to the other stakeholders. The author concludes by recommending some actions to address these constraints. This paper--a product of the Finance and Private Sector Development Unit, South Asia Region--is part of a larger effort in the region to study access to finance in India.

Looking to examples in Thailand and Bangladesh, this book enumerates the various factors which have been instrumental in weakening the rural credit agencies set up to relieve rural poverty in developing countries.

Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) have increasingly been used as a vehicle for social, political, and economic empowerment as well as a platform for service delivery. Although a growing body of literature shows evidence of positive impacts of SHGs on various measures of empowerment, our understanding of ways in which SHGs improve awareness and use of public services is limited. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper first examines how SHG membership is associated with political participation, awareness, and use of government entitlement schemes. It further examines the effect of SHG membership on various measures of social networks and mobility. Using data collected in 2015 across five Indian states and matching methods to correct for endogeneity of SHG membership, we find that SHG members are more politically engaged. We also find that SHG members are not only more likely to know of certain public entitlements than non-members, they are significantly more likely to avail of a greater number of public entitlement schemes. Additionally, SHG members have wider social networks and greater mobility as compared to non-members. Our results suggest that SHGs have the potential to increase their members’ ability to hold public entities accountable and demand what is rightfully theirs. An important insight, however, is that the SHGs themselves cannot be expected to increase knowledge of public entitlement schemes in absence of a deliberate effort to do so by an external agency.

Volume numbers determined from Scope of the guidelines, p. 12-13.

World Bank Technical Paper No. 304. Reviews the status and availability in developing countries of photovoltaic (PV) technology and looks at the prospects for using this technology in light of current energy use and costs of other energy sources. The report provides the necessary background information and highlights the questions raised and the calculations that must be made whenever PV applications are being considered in the developing world