Microfinance-A Hope for the poor in the changing Indian Economic Scenario: an Empirical Study of Barpeta District, Assam Shil Parag1, Nath Bhabananda Deb2,3 1Assistant Professor (STAGE-III), Department of Commerce Assam University, Silchar-788011, India 2Research Scholar, Department of Commerce, Assam University Silchar 3Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce, Karimganj College, Karimganj, India Online published on 2 May, 2018. Abstract In India, despite of having a vast network of formal financial sector still ‘finance facilities’ are away from the poor. The lack of communication and flow of finance between lenders and borrowers is not because of no demand for financial helps, but for the ‘conditions’ in between. The conditions like collateral, caution money, guarantee, mortgage, documents, procedures etc. stopped the poor needy people from getting financial helps and they are remain ignorant of finance. Microfinance, which is popularly known as the ‘finance for the poor’ are in huge practice in all over the world, especially in countries like Bangladesh, India, South-Africa, Srilanka etc. from last two decades among the rural poor and women. ‘Microfinance’ becomes an alternative means of finance in many developing countries to minimize the gap of conditions of lenders and borrowers, where poor people (mainly rural poor and women) are being finance in groups, considering their potentiality and not merely on their credit worthiness. The performance of microfinance (specially under SHG Model) in providing financial help to poor have also been noticed in Barpeta district of Assam; so, an attempt has been made in this paper to highlight the same with the help of both primary and secondary data. Microfinance become a shadow for the poor people in the district and also doing well as compere to their earlier conditions as stated by the respondents. Though the performance is not up to the mark in many cases, but progressive and changing trend has been noticed and hopefully they could do more if proper monitoring, training, management, timely credit, micro-industrial assistance/help etc. are provided. Top Keywords Microfinance, SHG, Performance, Poor, Lenders, Monitoring. Top |