The interviewees are mostly passive-aggressive in their criticisms, but the criticisms are nonetheless damning: they report that recipients are often paying off microloans using predatory lenders; that microlending has led to oversaturated credit markets so that dowries have inflated to impractical heights, resulting in, apparently, increased rates of suicide; that the empowerment of women is a myth (or a lie) as it is the dominant male householders who are deciding how the money is used; that the often-touted success of microfinance -- the upper-90's repayment rates -- is actually a symbol of the intense pressure the recipients are under to repay at all costs.
---
I put a lot of money into microfinance (all of my charitable investment, in fact), and it is something I believe in, so I try to pay careful attention to the other side of the story.
This is the first I have heard such scathing reviews, but I am not entirely convinced. It seems to me that the interviewees are looking for any potential negatives -- negatives that might not necessarily apply to microfinance as a whole, but rather a few particular cases. With any charitable causes, the law of unintended consequences is going to rear its ugly head, and I am not convinced that any charitable strategy produces, on the whole, better outcomes with fewer unintended consequences than microfinance.
If you believe otherwise, I would love to know which charitable strategy and why.
---
