Microfinancing lessons from a mandi that govt-run Mudra seems to have lost

MFI agents hand out 15-day loans in cash with a lecture on vaccines to the women, who would otherwise approach money lenders to buy vegetables in bulk and sell at the market next to the Ganga

A keen officer in the PMO had asked the finance ministry team that had gone there with the proposal for setting up Mudra, the refinancing agency for micro finance institutions (MFI), what the new solution they hoped to offer for an old problem was. The answer wasn’t particularly brilliant, but the government went ahead nevertheless to set up the agency as a subsidiary of Small Industries Development Bank of India. That was in 2015. 

Once India, particularly its rural areas, begins to collect itself from the ravages of the second and third wave of Covid, micro finance is