"This paper reviews the current level and pattern of access to finance for India's rural poor and examines some of the … key microfinance approaches in India, taking a close look at the most dominant among these, the Self Help Group (SHG) Bank … 6,000 households in India undertaken by the authors. The main findings and implications of the paper are as follows …

Since the early national plans, successive governments in independent India have emphasized the link between improving … India's poor, the overwhelming majority of whom are concentrated in rural areas, motivated the nationalization of commercial … dominant players in the formal rural finance market. Yet, the vast majority of India's rural poor, still do not have access t o …