Author Archives: admin

With an even-fisted force in the air, he yells, “We are not a slave to your microfinance!” and storms off to the back of the house, leaving twenty-three clients, one collection officer, and two surveyors in a small room shyly … Read More

Agriculture finance is the most crucial aspect for any farmer in a country where 60% of population depends on farming. India is also one of the largest producer of food grains and cash crops as well as the largest consumer … Read More

The current GIZ-NABARD-CMF study is being conducted in 4 states (Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab, and West Bengal). The study explores general and policy-specific questions regarding agricultural financing in India. Broader research questions in the study look at the structure of … Read More

If one were to look at the CMF Publications list, especially the factsheets, one would find a factsheet pertaining to the topic mentioned above. We at CMF will be focusing on this topic: Agricultural Financing exclusively over the next two … Read More

To my mind, the biggest challenge of social science research using survey data is reconciling the rigours of mathematical analysis with the gymnastics of developing intuitive inferences about the nature and dynamics of everyday social reality. Few things illustrate this … Read More

Saving has lately been recognized as an inevitable instrument of financial inclusion. But this financial behaviour needs to be judicious as undisciplined saving traps people in the vicious circle of poverty that results in accumulated debt. For low-income households, situations … Read More

This is the inspiring story of an ordinary housewife who rose above her position and succeeded in making her life worthwhile. Hailing from Narpatpur, Varanasi, Gita Devi was just another regular housewife whose job description included looking after her family … Read More

An interview with  Mrs. Usha Thorat, Director, CAFRAL. In  this  issue, we get to know more about  CAFRAL’s aspirations and future plans in the area of Financial Research. Usha Thorat, former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India, took over  as … Read More

It is estimated that more than half of the Indian labor force is engaged in agriculture.  Given this, India’s productivity in agriculture is still quite low.  For example, India is the second largest producer of cotton in the world, after … Read More

My first blog post from Satara was a basic introduction to our project on long term savings and the second was about some preliminary results from our baseline data. This post is not technically about the project but is more … Read More