400 Women join a self-help group (SHG) every hour in India. One NGO joins Nabard’s microfinance programme every day.

Rs 8,000crore is the total microcredit disbursed. Estimated demand is around Rs 150,000 crore and the average loan size is Rs 4,000.

66% microcredit is disbursed through SHGs and the rest by microfinance institutions (MFIs). 2.23 million SHGs are linked to banks today.

560 banks --- 48 commercial banks, 196 regional rural banks and 316 cooperative banks are involved in microfinance.

98% Is the repayment rate of microcredit. Interest rate charged by SHGs/MFIs is between 15 to 30 per cent.

Newspaper Columns on poverty invariably sound preachy. Mohammad Yunus, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, has partly solved that problem by making poverty mitigation a sound business proposition.

With disbursements worth $5.72 billion so far, and $15.21 million in profits last year, no one doubts the viability of his Grameen Bank. It has 7.6 million clients together with Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). These two microfinance institutions (MFIs) have made group lending- and recovery- an art form while keeping transaction costs absurdly low.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs cites the observation of Dr Allan Rosenfield, Dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, that most women participants of MFI in Bangladesh followed the two-child-norm in 2003, against six to seven children in the sixties. Their independence and empowerment seemed a by-product of their successful micro-enterprises. Bangladesh’s fertility rate has come down from 6.6 in 1975 to 3.1 in 2000. Sachs believes that the modest rise in household incomes, as a result of family planning, will get invested in health and education.

In a 2004 paper, Fazlul Hoque, a senior BRAC associate concedes that the Bangladeshi poor are still largely excluded from development management process but gives evidence of a modest, positive change in the countryside.