Lately, India has witnessed widespread emergence of federated structures of informal self-help groups (SHGs) as a corollary of the growth of the SHG movement. Besides ensuring the sustainability of SHGs, these federated structures are seen as potential instruments that can socioeconomically empower the former and their members. However, the formation of SHG federations has been neither uniform across the country nor free of perplexity as regards their design and role. Federations of cooperatives are seen as natural extensions of the organic growth process of primary cooperatives formal or informal. The federating process, by way of vertical integration, is supposed to bring in several benefits as it tries to address the felt needs and shared values of members. The conceptual and normative tenets visualized for the success of federations suggest that such structures have to be bottom-up while being democratic and economically sound in their integration and functioning. The article is an attempt to critically examine the design and policy challenges confronting the SHG federations. Based on an assessment of their emerging roles and performance, the article identifies possible ways of taking forward the SHG federations in a sustainable way.

This article attempts to examine the flagship poverty alleviation scheme Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) against the background of emerging policies aimed at ‘good governance’. How far the SGSY, a major programme of the Government of India for poverty alleviation has been able to incorporate ‘good governance’ principles like participation of the people, involvement of civil society, and sound project formulation, is the main focus of this article. The governance approach indicated in the SGSY is supposed to be significantly different from earlier poverty alleviation programmes in India, especially the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP). However, the article, based on a review of some available studies, indicates that the SGSY is implemented in a very deterministic and top-down manner, ignoring the participatory approach that is envisaged in the design. In the whole process, right from identification of participants to supporting them, to developing a sustainable income generation enterprise, the SGSY is beset with problems like faulty selection, improper identification of viable schemes, sidelining of capacity building and, above all, lack of integration among different agencies involved in implementation of the scheme. The article concludes that ‘good governance’ for poverty alleviation programmes seems to be more of rhetoric than a reality.

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Microfinance, having emerged as a widespread phenomenon, is commonly dominated by the approach advocating undue financial and commercial orientation. Microfinance interventions following such an approach have come under severe scrutiny due to a series of crises encountered by them. This paper is an attempt in the direction of guiding the debate over microfinance in a more meaningful way by capturing the experience of interventions based on alternative approaches, especially focusing on community based enabling models. The enabling models emphasise on creating collectives whereby members can exercise control and ownership providing apparently several advantages. By bringing community issues to the fore they help resolve many of the contradictions that go with the delivery of microfinance. The experience, however, shows that enabling models are faced with several challenges in realising their full potential be it in terms of their form, outreach or depth of services or ability to tap developmental links for creating holistic impact. The paper identifies policy implications for strengthening the enabling models like creating suitable legal framework for community based structures, ensuring resource support for the process of social intermediation and capacity building, providing adequate and cheaper public funds for meeting their loan fund needs, and boosting the linkages between microfinance and other developmental programmes.

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