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Tag: Financial inclusion

Financial Inclusion – Key to Economic & Social Development

Priya Naik, Founder and Managing Director of Samhita Social Ventures emphasizes on financial inclusion as the key to economic and social development in an article in CSR Mandate.

In India RBI describes financial inclusion as the process of ensuring access to appropriate financial products and services needed by vulnerable groups such as weaker sections and low-income groups at an affordable in a fair and transparent manner by mainstream institutional players. 

Financial inclusion is a fundamental cornerstone of economic and social development. The mandatory CSR spending, as stipulated by the Companies Bill 2012, can help foster partnerships and help achieve a joint approach to promoting financial inclusion in a way that is mutually beneficial to all stakeholders.  In order to realize the goal of universal financial inclusion, each stakeholder has to play its part and more importantly, collaborate with each other to harness the benefits and synergies of shared efforts.

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Govt, business, civil society must implement direct cash transfers to avoid ‘society-wide poverty trap’, says Noble Laureate Esther Duflo

Esther Duflo, 2019 Nobel laureate, on Monday said that it is essential for government, business, and NGO stakeholders to focus on cash transfers to economically vulnerable populations to avoid entering into a ‘society-wide poverty trap” in India. Duflo said “this is something business should be keenly interested in and very much behind it, not just because it’s the right thing to do morally, but also because I think it is the most responsible thing to do economically…self-interested business should be very much lobbying for this cash transfer.”

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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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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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Co-creating solutions with Samaj, Sarkar and Bazaar

While navigating the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the economy, industry and society, Samhita Social Ventures and IDFC Institute co-hosted ‘Leaders with Purpose’ — a webinar series aimed at exploring how Samaj, Sarkar and Bazaar can come together at this unprecedented time and reimagine solutions to benefit both business and the socio-economically vulnerable.

Empathy and economic sense call for direct cash transfers

During a Leaders with Purpose webinar hosted by Samhita and IDFC Institute on 11 May 2020, Nobel Laureate and Director of J-PAL, Esther Duflo emphasized that direct cash transfers to the poor is both the morally correct and economically wise action required to be taken by larger society.

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Disclaimer: This blog is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of cooperative agreement no. 7200AA21CA00027 (2021-2026). The contents are the responsibility of Chemonics International and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
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