 |
ISSUES, PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS:
A CRITICAL REVIEW OF LITERATUREIn association with EPW Research Foundation, Mumbai |
Dr. S.L.
Shetty’s interests in the
discipline of Economics have been wide-ranging, with macroeconomics and the
financial sector issues being the core. He served the Reserve Bank of India
(RBI) for 24 years and retired in 1993 as Chief of its research department. On
leaving the RBI, he became the Founder Director of EPW Research Foundation
(EPWRF) in which capacity he continued for 16 years. While in the RBI, he spent
4 years in a foreign central bank on an IMF assignment. In academic circles,
Dr. Shetty is known for his seminal work titled Structural Retrogression in the
Indian Economy since the Mid-Sixties (NIBM, 1978) and a series of other
contributions through the columns of the EPW. They have ranged from monetary
and fiscal policies to money market studies and development issues in the
financial sector.
ABOUT THE BOOK :
The study is an epitome
of the mind-boggling flurry of literature on the subject of microfinance. But,
it has gone far beyond the review of literature on the concept, country models
and history of microfinance movement in India; it has provided a thematic work
on the factual profiles of different microcredit programmes prevalent in the
country and their progress, The book contains a very up-to-date review of the
regulatory measures and their nuances and a detailed review of the evaluation
and impact studies. The book also dwells on the limitations of the mFI movement
to satisfy the credit needs of the vast informal sector enterprises which also
seem to get generally neglected by the formal financial institutions. This has
led the study to a review of the new initiatives which the authorities have
taken under the broad theme of ‘financial inclusion.’ Keeping the broader
objective of distributional goals embedded in the microfinance movement, the
book attempts an assessment of the wider challenges faced by the financial
system, and provides a dossier of suggestions for reaching out to the small and
informal sectors on a more effective scale. As for the mFI movement itself,
apart from bringing out it potentialities and also critiquing it, the study
presents a set of suggestions for strengthening and expanding its role.
