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> Posted by Center Staff
Beth Rhyne’s latest contribution to the Huffington Post examines specific steps that microfinance leaders are taking to respond to a legion of new challenges facing the industry.
Vijay Mahajan, founder of the microfinance institution BASIX, and widely regarded as the dean of Indian microfinance, is walking the hot and dusty roads of rural India in his kurta pajama and sandals, and as he’s walking he’s thinking about the microfinance industry’s tough year. A crisis of overindebtedness among some clients in Andhra Pradesh, India, political attacks on Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, and academic studies that question the magnitude of microloan impact have all conspired to shake the global microfinance community at its roots.
Vijay, who has devoted thirty years of his life to microfinance, is taking these challenges very seriously. He has dropped all routine activities and is spending two months walking in villages across India, both as a spiritual journey and as a way to listen fully to the voices of low income people…
> Posted by Center Staff
One of the more profound reflections on the crisis in Indian microfinance comes to us from Vijay Mahajan, who is undertaking Shodh Yatra, an “extended grassroots enquiry into the lives and livelihoods of poor people.”
His journey comes in the form of a “walk while in a village or a town, stopping by every once in a while to have a dialogue; and drive between habitations.”
Mahajan, who makes Gandhi a spiritual touchstone as he blogs about his experiences, is a trailblazer in Indian microfinance who was listed by BusinessWeek’s Asia edition as being among the country’s 50 most powerful people.
“I intend to do this [Shodh Yatra] for 60 days over a period of Jan 30, 2011 (today) till April 18, 2011,” he writes. “The beginning date and place are significant to me – today is Gandhiji’s martyrdom day and I am starting from his Ashram in Sevagram, Wardha; near Nagpur in Central India.” Read the rest of this entry »
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