Group Lending Scheme operating through Primary Agricultural Credit Society: A Critical Assessment

The basic objective of the paper is to identify the effectiveness of group lending based microfinance programme operating through Primary Agricultural Credit Society to improve the economic condition among the rural participants in two blocks of Hooghly district in West Bengal. Here to do the impact study we have considered both Difference-in-Difference and First Difference Method with the help of longitudinal data and it is applied to minimize the possibility of selection bias during the time of drawing samples. It came out from field survey that very few marginal farmers had taken credit from their respective groups for agricultural purposes. Results reveal that there has been no significant impact of microfinance programme in terms of improvement of the outcome variables among the member households in spite of low interest rate charged on loans, high repayment rate within groups and small size of self-help groups. The reasons responsible are lack of skill-based training programmes for the members of groups and lack of marketing facilities to promote and sell the products produced by the members of self-help groups. The only positive aspect is the members can now protect themselves from the crunches of professional money lenders who charged exorbitant interest rates