Rume: Rural Microfinance and Employment

Program Workshop Overindebtedness 7-8 december, 2009 November 2009

Workshop Indebtedness and Social Exclusion, December 1st, 2009, Pondicherry (India). November 2009

Thèse Picherit David "Entre villages et chantiers : circulation des travailleurs, clientélisme et politisation des basses castes en Andhra Pradesh, Inde" October 2009

International Workshop "From debt to over-indebtedness Processes, practices and meanings", december 7-8, 2009, Paris. October 2009

Jeunes éduqués en zone rurale : castes, classes et nouvelles formes de migration en Inde du sud September 2009

The main objective of the proposal is to explore the linkages between rural finance and rural employment - including diversification and migration - with a view to contributing to the ongoing discussions and interventions in the fields of rural development and poverty and vulnerability reduction.

Welcome!

A. Rural Finance and Employment

The project addresses the following research questions: what is the impact of microfinance in terms of rural employment (positive or negative, and at distinct levels - individual/household, region) and more specifically (1) whether diversification (including migration) occurs at the local level, (2) whether it promotes, directly or indirectly, higher-return activities portfolios, (3) whether it leads to a more active labor market and to desirable shifts in the nature of labor contracts and wages, and (4) what are the overall effects in terms of vulnerability.

Our hypothesis is that beyond individual characteristics such as entrepreneurial capacity, attitude towards risk, or cultural and identity features, the processes will depend on the combination of two sets of factors: (1) an enabling environment, including infrastructure, opportunities of access to other input, output and service markets, but also a supportive social setting; and (2) the quality of financial services, broadly defined as their ability to meet the local demand.

B. Microfinance as a Process: Governance, Appropriation and Quality of Services

Our project addresses the following research questions: what are the processes through which microfinance institutions and their clients address the issue of improving the quality of the financial services, broadly defined as their ability to meet the local demand? What are the conditions for raising the prospect for those processes to lead to improved quality of financial services?

Our first assumption is that the governance of microfinance institutions, both at the internal and external level, plays a key role in their capacity to steer those processes in order to provide quality financial services. Our second assumption is that clients also play a key role (formal as well as informal) in co-building the quality of financial services.