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Author: Samhita - CGF

Can the Microcredit Model Be Improved?

The problem here is not a lack of microcredit programs or their execution but rather something in the model itself. This leads us to ask: Can we modify or extend certain aspects of the microfinance model to achieve better outcomes for recipients?

Vikas Dimble, Director of Knowledge and Research at Samhita and Ahmed Moshfiq Mobarak, Professor of Economics at Yale University write on how microcredit can be used to help poor communities pull through unexpected shocks if the microcredit model is modified to incorporate inclusivity and flexible lending practices.

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Frequently Asked Questions: Compliance & The Returnable Grant

Returnable Grants (RGs) have emerged as a transformative financial instrument, driving economic empowerment and livelihood for vulnerable communities.

A Returnable Grant (RG) provides short-term, affordable, and flexible capital (zero interest and zero collateral) to individuals and entrepreneurs. The RG levies individuals with a moral (and not legal) obligation to repay.

Organisations such as Godrej, S&P Global, 360 One, Michael Susan, and Dell Foundation have embraced RGs as a central component of their projects aimed at supporting financial inclusion and livelihoods of informal workers, microentrepreneurs, farmers, artisans, and beauty entrepreneurs, and have seen its transformative impact through increased financial knowledge, increased incomes, and access to new skills and jobs.

This blog addresses frequently asked questions on compliance of Returnable Grants.

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Our Private Healthcare System

India has a mixed healthcare system, with majority of healthcare services being provided by the private sector. This accentuates the importance of private health care enterprises to partake in providing smaller and district level health providers with the support to continue functioning during economic upheaval.

Public health and economic experts stressed the importance of organising and fortifying the private healthcare system

The most vulnerable dictate the strength of our value chains

COVID-19 has exposed the weakest links in our supply chains, the largest impact of which has been felt by the poor. As we rebuild rural livelihoods, we need to innovate towards decentralisation, write Harish Hande and Jeffrey Prins in India Development Review (IDR).

While we take a fresh look at how we innovate in value chains, they need to be understood from the perspective of the most vulnerable.

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The key to COVID-19 prevention in slums

Slums across India have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis. 42% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums and therefore they require carefully planned measures to ensure that preventative and primary care remain accessible.

The Bridgespan Group and WHO emphasise that community participation is the key to implement any COVID-19 preventive interventions in the slums.

This is as a model of care, designed while incorporating community participation is more likely to be accepted and effective in the long-term. To elaborate on the practicality of their recommendation, they describe activities where communities have been engaged and relay how this principle helped the programs in Mumbai slums.

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Innovative lending practices can improve traditional microfinance

Research on the traditional microfinance model reveals the alterations that can be made to further small businesses and welfare gains. Vikas Dimble, Associate Director of Knowledge and Research at Samhita, and Ahmed Moshfiq Mobarak, Professor of Economics at Yale University emphasize the importance of flexible lending models, using local information to select eligible beneficiaries and allowing beneficiaries to make use of microcredit beyond entrepreneurial purposes.

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Are healthcare facilities accessible to India

“India no longer has the luxury of continuing to wait and watch as millions of its tribal peoples suffer and die from preventable causes.”

There is a much higher incidence of maternal and under-five mortality, stuntedness, tuberculosis, and cardiovascular diseases among India’s 104 million tribals compared with the larger population.

Piramal Swasthya and The Bridgespan Group map out the reasons for the lack of reduction of health challenges in tribal areas based on their field studies.

They outline factors such as barriers in access to healthcare and information, insufficient number of public health facilities, and lack of data.

They stress that for scalable and population-wide impact to be achieved, especially to meet India’s national aspirations of Sustainable Development goals of health and well being- a focused and collaborative approach between all stakeholders of society is the only way forward.

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Protecting human capital to emerge from the crisis

Corporate leaders recommend fortified social security provisions for gig economy workers. Business leaders called for reimagined approaches to social security and employer-employee relationships in the gig economy in light of the gaps that the COVID-19 crisis has revealed.