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Credit from whom and for what? The diversity of borrowing sources and uses in rural southern India
Author(s) -
Guérin Isabelle,
Roesch Marc,
Venkatasubramanian Govidan,
D'Espallier Bert
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.1785
Subject(s) - perspective (graphical) , debt , microfinance , diversity (politics) , politics , economics , descriptive statistics , sociology , public economics , economic growth , finance , political science , anthropology , law , statistics , mathematics , artificial intelligence , computer science
This article aimed to deepen understandings of poor household borrowing practices by drawing on a case study from rural Southern India. It combines descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis to show that households juggle with a wide range of borrowing sources and that each serves very specific purposes. From a theoretical perspective, we suggest that the neoclassical cost/benefit framework often used to analyse debt decisions should be enlarged to include social criteria in line with recent insights from economic anthropology and political economy. From a policy perspective, we argue that all things being equal, local financial arrangements might have important comparative advantages over traditional microfinance products. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.