# Introduction mall savings of the economically deprived people for the purpose of their future requirement and for the resolution of credit, insurance services and to meet special goal of empowerment of such privileged group is the basic need of development for any developing country. To ensure these amenities microfinance came into existence. The concept of microfinance has become the master concept in deprived countries of Asian, since the success and innovative idea of microfinance by Grameen bank of Bangladesh. The concept of microfinance does not remain restricted to Asian countries only it has widen all around the world and emerged as a powerful tool for poverty alleviation, especially in third world countries including India, it has established its standard in developing countries as imperative means for diminution of poverty. Microfinance is all about finance the inclusive financial system is associated with faster growth and better income distribution (Badu & Jindal, 2000). Microfinance is meant for the wealth supply to people who are extremely poor, as Mohammad Younis founder of the innovative concept of micro finance in Bangladesh said conventional banks look for the rich but Grameen bank look for the absolute poor this clearly indicates that such scheme is meant for unfortunates, and unfortunately people of India is said to be the home of one third of the world's total unfortunate population. The factor like abject poverty, low education, diseases, and infrastructure are major issues which Indian fail to address since its independence. Keeping in view all the factors of socio-economic of poor the World Bank has categorized India under the low income class (World Bank, 1990). So the notion of microfinance has set up an optimistic field in Indian economy. India constitutes the second largest populated nation in the world but the astonishing is that worlds one third poor population lives in India which in result leads India to abject poverty, low education ratio, low standard of life, low sex ratio and exploitation. Microfinance against poverty has been recognized as one of the best tools by a number of countries including India for the proper address of unfortunate people. In India the program of microfinance has inherent capacity to unveil the untapped potentiality of under privileged by mobilizing them to pool their own funds, building their capacities, and empowering them to leverage external credit (Zubair, 2006). The availability of finance to poor helps them to catch up with the rest of the economy as it grows. Finance also helps extend the range of individuals, households and firms and get a grip in the modern economy. Microfinance is growing and suitable structure for India poor for their well being in every aspect. It has been confidently agreed that finance supportive schemes for rural development excessively boosts the income growth of the poorest, reduces income inequality, and this is strongly associated with poverty alleviation (Beck, Kunt & Peria, 2006). No doubt that India has grown enormous but majority of ill-fated people still does not seem to have access to finance from conventional sources, it takes an average of 33 weeks to get a loan approved in rural India, with borrowers having to pay up to 42% of their loan amounts in bribes to officials (World Bank, 2005). So clearly means it is very hard for the Indian poor to get credit support from conventional banks and profit earning institution. For a successful entrepreneur, finance is as much important as innovation of ideas and risk bearing factor are. In India the ideas and risk bearing factor was never the problem, the rich ideas and risk taking entrepreneurs are numerous in India, both in rural and the urban areas, but the setback of non availability of funds or finance is hammering these entrepreneurs. Since the independence and prior to that, Indian government has strenuous more on industrialization especially in the beginning years of independence which makes the condition of entrepreneurs even worse. Similarly government promoted commercial banks more than the development banks, those commercial banks never came forward for the promotion of ideas and innovations. These commercial banks always looked forward for the prosperous customer were they can get advantage for the wealth maximization, they never thought about the poor and those customers, where from margin of profit was less. As there was no other promotional support from the government for the proper alleviation of poverty and endorsement of entrepreneurs this led the condition of poor and entrepreneurs worst then the worse. The detraction of financial opportunities to the maximum population of rural India through banking inclusion has indirect effect upon the attainment of education and health opportunities and this in turn, has adverse impact on social, financial, and economic empowerment of poor, since the need of microfinance came into existence. Microfinance was in India since independence but has attained its recognition in the late years of 1970's with the motive of equality, equity and mutual self-help and on the philosophy of cooperation and mutual benefits. There is no unique definition of microfinance, different countries and different people define it differently, however many initiators who have worked for elevation of microfinance has defined microfinance as. At the initial stage it was believed that microfinance is a narrow concept of financial services, that is general services like saving and credit there to (Ledgerwood, 1999). Later it is said that it can also include other financial services such as insurance and payment services. (Schreiner & Colombet, 2001). With the passage of time and the improvement of microfinance, people start to believe that microfinance is a "provision of carefulness of credit and other financial services and products of very small amounts to the poor in rural, semi urban and urban areas, for enabling them to raise their income levels and improve living standards" (Microfinance study mode, 2009). Further Indian Micro Finance Bill defines it as Micro Finance is an economic development tool whose objective is to assist the poor to work with their way out of poverty. It covers a range of services which include, in addition to the provision of credit, many other services such as savings, insurance, money transfers, counseling, etc. (Standing Committee On Finance, 2014). All together we can summarize microfinance as the service rather than the core meaning of finance, it is the service of providing the finance and financial services to the people in rural, semi urban and urban areas for assisting them to raise their income level and improve living standard. Microfinance is for the intensive development; (severe) growth strategy of microfinance sector can be cost effective and ensure the long term sustainability of the sector (Craig and Cheryl, 2006). Microfinance is now mostly concerned with rural people as the urban market has become overcrowded and vast area of rural is to cover yet, microfinance institutes with the collaboration of central development banks and Non-Government organizations(NGO's) carrying out the operation in these areas. Microfinance institution and microfinance itself came into existence in early 1980s with small efforts at forming informal self-help groups (SHG) to provide access to much-needed savings and credit services. From this small beginning, the microfinance sector has grown significantly in the past decades. Even though microfinance institutes (MFI) in India works for urban and rural poor in different states of India with different names but the aim of these institutions is to enable under privileged people to become self-reliant by engaging them in income generating activities. Further by participating in its livelihood and financial literacy programs. These Microfinance institutions can either provide savings services directly through deposit taking or make arrangements with other financial institutions to provide savings facilities to tap small savings in a flexible manner (Barry, 1995). The main product which they (MFI's) offer is the micro credit for the deprived people, which is said to be the synonymous to microfinance in Indian context. However microfinance is not confined to credit only other services like savings, thrift and microfinance has not attained its heights (CRISIL, 2009). Microfinance sector in India is fragmented from east to west and from north to south of the national boundary, we have crossed the mark of 4000 solo MFI's, NGO's and mutual NGO-MFIs of which more 400 have active lending programs, the loan capacity of Indian MFI's has crossed the mark of 35000 crore by March 2015. However these microfinance institutions were incomplete without the financial support of National bodies like the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) which are offering significant (financial resources) and financial services to the world of microfinance and financial institutions. Saving of small amount by the number of people in the group can help them at the time of authentic need and saving makes the people of the group more disciplined towards the future Volume XVI Issue I Version I misfortunate's. To some extent this microfinance concept of SHG is based on the principle of Adam Smith who said "The best result comes from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself" further he said self-interest is one of the important aspect of nation wealth maximization. The growing rate of SHGs in India shows that the people themselves disciplined towards the saving. # a) Status of microfinance in India 2008 onwards Microfinance in India is running under two basic models of microfinance one is Self Helping Group (SHG) Model and other one is Micro financial institute model. The SHG model works on the principle of directly financing to SHG by the banks and MFI model covers financing of micro finance institutions(MFIs) by banking agencies for the purpose of lending the same amount to SHG's and other small barrowers (NABARD, 2009). From one side it is Self Help Group (SHG) which is based upon the saving of groups (SG) that is selfmanaged community based groups that provide their members access to basic financial services. SHGs are composed of 15 to 25 self-selected individuals who meet regularly (usually weekly or fortnightly) to save and, if desired, borrow for short periods, paying monthly interest at a rate set by the group (Aga Khan Development Network [AKDN]) even government is coming forward to help these SHG's. From the other side microfinance institutes find out the deprived ones and helps them to have access to finance with their own and from government organizations especially from NABARD and SIDBI. The financial institutions and SHG's in India have set their standard to reduce poverty since decades. There are some financial institutions which came into existence but do not budge for the long, however their contribution can not the ignored. These institutions have added their best to extend microfinance massage to the people and had accord for the up-liftment of the covered area. We have taken the contributory microfinance institution and SHG's which have helped to make financial assistance available to helpless people since 2008 till 2014. We have shown the variation in the number of SHG's and MFI's. Further their contribution to the world of finance in India. The table above shows two important aspects related to the microfinance, first one is the table shows the increase and decrease in the number of Self Help Group which has marvelous growth in number during the year 2009-10 and 2010-11 but in very next two years it has shown downward trend in the growth of numbers. Further under SHG we have taken how much loan has been distributed and how much loan is outstanding in particular year. The increasing and decreasing trend of loan distribution has been calculated and shown in the graph by taking 2008-2009 as a base year. The loan distribution has shown positive growth in each year especially the year 2009-10, 12-13 and 2013-14 has astonishing growth, however the year 2010-11 and 2011-12 have not that much impressive growth. In the second part, the table shows the growth and decline in the number of Microfinance institutions with that it also shows how much loan has been distributed through MFI's and how much loan is outstand yet. The number of MFI are not great in number yet, its total number has been struggling since last five years the number has not touched the 1000 mark yet many MFI came into existence but only few has sustained in the market the number was 581 and 691 in the year 2010 and 2011 but unfortunately and miss management of these MFI the number is coming down and has reached to 545 in the year 2014. However the financial support of these MFI's is quite inspiring, the loan distribution shown positive growth from the year 2009 till 2012 but unfortunately the distribution has come down with sharp decline in the year 2012-13 but there after it has again moved towards positive distribution direction. Further the loan outstanding is also shown against the amount of loan disbursed. If we analyze the data we came to know that loan repayment is good in case of MFI's even though amount loan distribution is small in MFI's. This loan repayment is the future growth of microfinance sector, good will be loan repayment better will be the growth of the sector at all. SHGs and MFI's, needed bit batter approach for the repayment and timely repayment of credit this definitely will increase the number of barrowers and will take that microfinance sector in India to the new success. # Graph 1 : Loan distribution to SHG's &MFI's and the Outstanding balance of the loan to MFIs b) National Bank for agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) and Microfinance Microfinance in India is playing an important role in poverty alleviation and is widely credited for its success both nationally and internationally. As we know India's labor force is composed of Agriculture (60%), Industry (12%) and services (28%) which clearly indicate that even today agriculture is a major source of income and employment, keeping this in view government of India came up with National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) in the year 1982 as a National development bank. The institute was accredited with all matters concerning to policy, planning and operational in the field of credit for agriculture and economic activities further all necessary matters patterning to providing & Regulation of credit and other facilities for the promotion and development of agriculture, village industries, handicrafts and other rural crafts. The corporate mission of NABARD is to make microfinance available to the abject poor and under privileged group of the rural areas. It offers a means for reaching the poor who are left out of the formal financial sector. NABARD is essentially new way to create a scalable and sustainable employment and to meet the unmet availability of funds for business related to agriculture. It has provided linkage to Self Help Group's since last three decades; NABARD had assigned itself the role of a facilitator and a mentor of the initiative. The focus was on bringing in various stakeholders on a common platform, building capacity among the stakeholders to take the movement forward while extending 100% refinance to all banks participating in the program (NABARD, 2012). Besides that NABARD conducts large number of seminars, workshops and training programs to create awareness about the microfinance program among all the stakeholders. # c) Nabard Linkage With Shg's NABARD with the experimental study with small group of people in the year 1992 by linking 255 Small Helping Groups and 48.5 lakh credit-linked SHG's and has become apex body for microfinance in India (NABARD, 2009). Since its formation it has provided output also (Binswanger & Khandker, 1992). NABARD provides refinance support, micro development equity fund, small credit and other facilities for promotion, expansion, of Self Help Groups not only self-help groups its provides support to individual level for the drive of plummeting poverty and allied activities for the purpose of development of the people mostly rural. It has become link between Reserves Bank, Commercial Banks and the people and further Microfinance institutions could also serve as intermediaries between borrowers and the formal financial sector and on-lend funds backed by a public sector guarantee (Phelps 1995). It has envisaged as an organizational device to provide undivided attention, forceful direction and a pointed focus to the credit problems arising out of an integrated approach to rural development, NABARD provides Opportunities to keep safe their occasional small surpluses in the form of saving and access to consumption loans to meet emergent needs so that people have free access to financial services and products, including loans for micro-enterprises. # d) Refinance Support Refinance is one of the top and most effective programs of NABARD under this scheme NABARD refinance to banks at 100% at a concessional rate of interest at 6.75% p.a. and financial assistance provided to banks to function as promoting institutions. It is microcredit initiative by NABARD for the motive of providing promotional support to social enterprises, stake holders of SHG's and microfinance clients by providing micro-capital for their small and medium business needs. The government of India in the year 2000-01 introduced this promotional support program with the name Micro-finance Development Fund (mFDF) and its initial corpus was Rs 100 crore to be funded by Reserve bank of India, NABARD and Commercial banks in the ratio of 40:40:20. Further in the year 2005-2006 the name has been modified as Microfinance Development and equity Fund(MFDEF) and the budget of this program has been increased to 200 crore in the same ratio (NABARD, 2006). NABARD is socially conscious and is working continuously for the promotional support. In the year 2010-11 the corpus of MFDEF has increased 400 crore and NABARD has contributed Rs29.95 crore as grant towards various promotional activities out of that Rs. 17.45 crore was for the capital support. Further in the year 2011-12 NABARD provided Rs.33.31 crore for promotional support out of the Rs. 28.68 was grant support for promotion and Rs. 4.63 was for capital support. NABARD has been expanding these funds from its own resource and has also been crediting interest on the unutilized portion of the funds (NABARD, 2012). In the year 2012-13 NABARD devote Rs. 33.50 crore for promotional support and has utilized 3700 NGO's and other partners for the dissemination of promotional support. On the 31 March 2013 government of India and Reserve Bank of India decided to formally close MFDEF scheme but NABARD has to provide continuous support for the promotion and awareness of microfinance among the people (NABARD, 2013). Inclusive growth has been succinctly defined by the Asian Development Bank as "growth that not only creates new economic opportunities, but also ensures equal access to the opportunities created for all segments of society, particularly for the poor" (Ali & Son, 2007). # II. # Small Industries Development Bank of India sidbi and Microfinance NABARD has almost covered every aspect of agriculture and Rural development by delivering its important services to the under privileged people, however there are some areas like industries, services and business which are not covered under NABARD but are important source of employment and income all they need is the finance to grow. So, the Government of India for the micro financing of small industries and enterprise with the help of Micro financial institutions (MFI) and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) came up with Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) in the year 1990 which was set-up with the aim of promoting, financing development of Industries in the small scale sector and coordination of the functions of other institutions engaged in similar activities (SIDBI). SIDBI is playing active role in delivering bulk finance to MFI/NGOs so that they can expand their operations and to reach the people who actually are in need of finance at a small amount (SIDBI, 2009). It is believed that the Small scale industries in India are small in size but big in achievement (Prasad, 1974). Ever since the inception of SIDBI it is continuously offering products and services in areas where there is a need, it including direct finance, international finance, government subsidy and fixed deposits mostly the microfinance services are offered indirectly through its main clients like Financial institutions and NGOs to the individuals, investors and entrepreneurs. Financial institutions with the help of SIDBI offers loans to micro and small entrepreneurs (MSE) which is said to be one of the most powerful tools to fight poverty and promote growth (Morduch, 1999;Robinson, 2001). Microfinance is not only the approach towards the poverty reduction it is a complete focus on development and negotiation between outreach and efficiency (Rhyne, 1998). SIDBI contributes in the Indian microfinance sector by providing credit and capacity building grants to large-and medium-scale microfinance institutions. Micro Finance Scheme of SIDBI are under operation since January, 1999 with a corpus of Rs.100 crore and a network of about 190 capacity assessed rated MFIs/NGOs Under the program (Charantimal,2012) works on the SHG model in countries like India. It is a financial systems approach to expanding outreach of the Indian financial sector to cover the comparatively comprehensive sector. ? Microfinance is a critical tool for reaching all those under privileged group such as women, socially and economically backward classes for the purpose to empower them and greatly improve their lives. ? The microfinance, in India is now a growing appreciation of the 'empowerment' dimension of finance, of the extent to which it can give ordinary people and the poor access to opportunity and the ability to escape from the ossified social structures. ? Although the sustainability and profitability of microfinance enterprises is frequently questioned, it is important to understand that microfinance is nonetheless a crucial component of development. ? NABARD and SIDBI are two important institutions being setup for the Purpose to improve income and reduce vulnerability of poor people and small producers by expanding their access to finance and markets. Microfinance is one of the important services provided by these institutions to achieve their mission of alleviation of poverty. ? NABARD is providing financial as well as promotional support to the SHGs and the individuals. Refinance, Capacity Building Program and Micro Finance Development and Equity Fund (MFDEF), are the important services of NABARD, which helps in meeting the equity needs of SHG and MFIs to some extent. ? It was reported for several years that the repayment rates of loans under microfinance were above 95 per cent. In fact, the high repayment rates in this sector were considered to be the most prominent feature of micro finance. ? While SIDBI is not showing positive growth like NABARD, it is because SIDBI is losing confidence in lending to MFIs is evident from the fact that the fresh lending to MFIs will increase the Nonperforming Assets (NPA) to the bank, the lending operations has declined by over 75% in year 2014 as compared to year 2010. There has also been a major decline in the number of MFIs availing fresh loans the number of MFIs was 146 in the year 2010, 139 in 2011,129 in the year 2013 and 84 in the last year. In spite of the fact that the loan outstanding against MFIs has come down dramatically during the past years banks like SIDBI are not ready for the risk of lending. ? Beginning with the refinancing agency to banks and other state level financial institutions for their credit, SIDBI has expended its activities including direct finance, bills finance, subsidies and promotion and development to small and medium entrepreneurs. ? The SIDBI and NABARD are two model institutes, for poverty alleviation and an groundbreaking approach to ensure access in rural contexts of India, where few options for financial services exist. IV. # Conclusion Financial development through outreach of microfinance program has an important bearing on the growth of human capital and thus, in turn, influences the incidence of poverty and under privileged empowerment. Institutions like NABARD and SIDBI have call for the coordination effort with the objective of strengthening and main-streaming the future operations of microfinance for the uplift of each sect of the society. NABARD and SIDBI has improves the sector of microfinance and has witnessed substantial amount of resources being earmarked towards meeting the credit needs of the poor. The banking network underwent an expansion phase without comparables in the world and more importantly deprived people got the benefits of the different financial services. These two institution bring the concept of deserve to desire in the world of microfinance in India. ![2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 Loan Disb to SHG's. Loan outstanding Loan Disb to MFI's. Loan outstanding to MFI's Role of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) in Indian MicrofinanceVolume XVI Issue I Version I](image-2.png "") 12008-092009-102010-112011-122012-132013-14SHG'sAmount in (Cr.)Total NO.612114769532507962000766000073180007430000Loan Disb.12253.5114453.3014547.7316534.7720585.3624017.36Loan O/S22679.8128038.2831221.1736340.0039345.3049297.96MFI'sAmount in (Cr.)Total No.581691471465426545Loan Disb.37328062.748848.965205.297839.5110282.49Loan O/S5009.091014713730.6211450.3514425.8216517.43 2YearRefinance by NABARDCumulative Refinance by NABARD2009-10Total of theGrowthTotalGrowthYearAmount%Amount%3175.56555.5321.212861.653175.3632.7(3175.56-2620.03)(12861.65-9686.09)2010-112545.36( -631.2)-19.915407.012545.3619.8(2545.36-3175.56)(15407.01-12861.65)2011-123072.59527.3620.718479.603072.5919.9(3072.59-2525,36)(18479.60-15407.01)2012-133916.64844.053916.6421.2(3916.64-3072.59)27.522396.24(22396.24-18479.602013-143745.84-170.8-4.326142.083745.8416.72(3745.84-3916.64)26142.08-22396.24 3YearLoan disbursedVariationLoan outstandingVariationAmountAmountMFIsRs(crore)MFIsAmountMFIsRs(crore)MFIAmount2009-10882665.75001463808.20002010-112843.78-86-1821.971393041.77-7-766.43(68.3%)2011-1212239.42+10-604.781291597.11-10-1444.6(71.6%)2012-1341408.27+29168.851021880.63-27+283.5(70.5%)2013-1441646.010237.74841979.90-1899.27(58.2%)Graph 2 : Showing Comparison of cumulative growthe) Promotional Supporti. 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