Microfinance in A.P

Hello everybody,
   Mohammed yunus from Bangladesh shared Nobel peace prize in 2006 for creating rural banking revolution in his country. In country like India where banking penetration in rural areas is very less and reports say around 40% of poor Indian's dont have access to low interest credit facilitites, most of them depend on money lenders for higher interest rates etc., one would expect the revolution created by the Nobel laurete in Bangladesh to work in India too. One example of this small banking is the Self Help Groups (SHG) in most parts of the country. I remember Chandra Babu Naidu publicising these groups a lot and showing it as state's achievement. Whenever the President's or Prime ministers of our and foreign countries visit we show case our self help groups as achievement. For some reason This has again become a corporate affair and many profit seeking companies have entered this department. MFI as they call these (Micro Finance Institutions) , have now become more popular than the SHG's. It has again ruined the system by increasing competition and MFI started lending loans without considering the returning status of the Individuals. And when the people did not return the money, they started pulling them to the streets. Indians even if we don't have money we care for the social status ( may be a bit generalising but it is true with many of us). People started suicides as a remedy to these MFI's. As usual the oppositions parties have sprung up to action and organized events to highlight the plight of common people who took the loans from the MFI;s. Meanwhile the News channels started putting discussions with great talented people in the panels and showcasing their creativity. Now the governement got the seriousness of the issue and given an ordinance to regulate the MFIs which was next passed by the governor. But the role model suicides have influenced a lot that whoever dies now will be deemed as an MFI's victim. (thanks that no political leader died in the last month, or else you know what would be the reason for the suicides.). It is now time for the government to shift the responsibilites to the RBI and do what it can. But no one know's how RBI will do this since it is whole lot of political leaders doing these MFI's.
Again an example of what we can only see but can't do anything....it happens like this in this country character only.


Thanks,
AMarnath A.