Impact Assessment of Microfinance in India: Survey, Issues and Challenges

Microfinance interventions and programmes by the government, microfinance institutions and the larger social sector produce multidimensional impacts across the stakeholders of these programmes and in particular on the beneficiary clients. These effects range from various direct and immediate economic effects to many indirect, non-economic and dynamic changes that are observed throughout the implementation levels. The analysis of the effects of various socio-economic interventions by Microfinance agencies requires a formal and well-structured impact assessment of such efforts. Impact Assessment or impact analysis encompasses the set of conceptual, empirical and other related aspects pertaining to the study of the extent to which microfinance access benefits the ultimate beneficiaries. In the Indian context, microfinance impact analyses contain many different issues that require a careful survey of the available evidence so as to better organize the major themes, problems and strategies employed by the impact analysts who have tried to understand the success or failure of various microfinance programmes across various economic and social parameters. This survey of evidences undertakes a modest attempt in this direction. Good amount of insights emerge on the conceptual, methodological and empirical dimensions of microfinance impact assessment and subsequently this paper locates the key issues and challenges faced by the researchers in this area.