Grameen Koota

We visited the Micro Finance Institution (MFI) Grameen Koota. Grameen Koota follows the Grameen Bank methodology to provide loans to the rural poor. These are small collateral free loans provided to poor women. Grameen Koota offers a variety of loan types for various purposes including 1,000 rupe emergency loans to 25,000 rupe income generation loans. They also have programs to help people get toilets, water connections to their homes and low smoke coke stoves. Sanitation, clean water, and in home smoke from cooking fires are all huge health risks in India. (I borrowed this picture):

We went out to a very small rural village where many women have taken loans to improve their silk production. Most of the women have also taken other loans for the improvements listed above. All of the women emphatically said that the loans from Grameen Koota have significantly improved their lives. These women were also clearly poorer in general than the women we saw in the urban area - very little jewelry, many were quite thin, and none were taking education loans.

Grameen Koota was the first MFI in India to be fully certified to use Grameen Foundation's Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI). The idea of the PPI is to provide MFI's with a simple tool for them to measure the actual poverty level of their customer base. There are 10 questions a customer has to answer at the time of a loan application and each time a new loan is given. The questions include things like how many children are in the household, do the children attend school, what type of home do they have, do they have/how many ceiling fans, TV's, washers, refrigerators, etc.

One interesting factoid I learned is that the poor in India are more likely to have a TV than a refrigerator. There is a simple explanation: if you can't afford to buy more than your food for today, you don't need a refrigerator. And believe me, there are no leftovers.

There are three levels of certification: data collection, electronic collection of data, and analysis of data. Grameen Koota has the third level. Through the PPI data, Grameen Koota can show what their customer base looks like. These numbers are from memory, so they might not be perfect, but they give an indication.  Around 12% of all of Grameen Koota's customers fall below India's poverty index of $0.93 household income per day, 65% fall below the international poverty index of $1.25 per day, and 78% fall below $2.00 household income per day. Note that the categories as you go up are cumulative.

By looking at the PPI data where clients have multiple PPI scores, Grameen Koota can see that this population has significantly improved their PPI's with $0.93 household income per day improving them most starting at 13% and falling to 11%, $1.25 per day income households dropping from 72% to 63% and $2.00 household income per day dropping from 78% to 70%. Unfortunately the data of multiple PPI's is currently limited mostly because data collection started only a few years ago. Another problem with the data is that it does not indicate causality.  Still these are pretty exciting statistics that show that things are improving at least for some of the poor.

By the way, if anyone has the precise numbers, please comment.

Here are some pictures from Grameen Koota:

Here are a few pictures of the villagers showing us the silk production:

Two Shivas

It was interesting to visit Shiva Temples in and around Bangalore.

First a little about the Hindu gods. Please forgive my probable inaccurate understanding, but here is my version. There are three main Hindu gods: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the protector, and Shiva the destroyer (hopefully the destroyer of evil). It of course is much more complicated than that. Anyway, apparently there is only 1 temple to Brahma because he was cursed by his wife for not including her in an important ceremony - wives are always an important part of ceremonies in Inida. That temple is in Pushkar. I am sure there are many temples to Vishnu but we didn't see them.

We did see several temples to Shiva, his son Ganesha, and Shiva's ridding vessel, Nandi. Shiva is a very powerful god who has many temples in India. Ganesha, his son, has an elephant head because Shiva's wife, Parvati, had a child while he was away. When Shiva came home he thought Ganesha was in intruder, so he cut the child's head off. Parvati was naturally upset, so Shiva promised to restore the child to life by using the head of the first sleeping being thay could find facing north. They found an elephant,  and so Ganesha has an elephant head. Ganesha is the destroyer of obstacles. He rides a mouse. By the way, I suggest that you check you bed and make sure that you don't sleep with your head facing north.

Nandi, the bull, is Shiva's ride. There are many temples that have a huge bull just outside a small shrine to Shiva, usually in his linga or phallic form. This can make it a little hard to recognize Shiva. It looks like a closed roman helmet sitting in a shallow trough representing the oneness of male and female as well as creation (and yes Shiva is also the destroyer).

The two temples we saw of Shiva that were so different were the the Kempfort Shiva Temple, built in 1995 and a 9th century Shiva Temple near the Nandi Hills. I didn't take any of my own pictures of the new temple because there was construction, and they were charging for everything. It also felt a little like the Disney version of Shiva. So here are a few I borrowed:

It was still really interesting to see. Though with the construction, we had to walk through a parking garage, through a storage area, into a very dark walkway. Since a few of us got there before anyone else who knew where we were going, I was  getting a little worried that we were being lead astray. Especially since we got there after 10:30 pm. But it turned out to right. I guess Ganesha was helping us a bit. Note the Himalayan mountains behind Shiva. That is because he only takes his bodily form in the Himalayans. Nandi and Shiva Linga were also there.

The  next morning we got up early and had a fabulous South India breakfast and then headed towards the Nandi Hills. We were hoping to find a guide when we got to the ancient Shiva temple at Bhoganandishwara. It turned out that one of our drivers is from a village only a few kilometers from the temple, so we already had our guide. The temple was amazing. There was a small Ganesha, a big Nandi and a Shiva Linga. We were able to attend noon Puja ceremony. The ceremony honors the gods.  They burned incense, chanted, rang bells, blessed food and flowers that people brought, and gave us blessed water and milk with butter (I declined both). It was amazing. The temple itself was covered with carvings, and was in the process of being prepared for a festival where groups of family members will camp out at the temple for many days. Here are some of my pictures from Bhoganandishwara (note that I was not able to take pictures of the inner parts of the temple):

Sights in India

For anyone who knows me well, this picture will not be a surprise. This is me riding around Bangalore for Ujjivan center meetings.

Here are a few more from Bangalore:

Ujjivan Center Meeting 2

I was very excited to go to the Ujjivan center meetings. This is where you really get to see micro finance in action. The second meeting we went to was again very lively. Many more of these women were getting loans for business. Sometimes the businesses are new. More often they are able to expand or improve an existing business with a loan. The women we talked to at this meeting were getting loans for: several were for a flower business (selling flowers at a temple of flowers door to door), several of the women's husbands had tile businesses and they were able to get some equipment with the loan, there were a couple of education loans, some for home improvement, and some for family health issues.

One woman's story made us realize why Ujjivan is trying to provide health care options and life insurance for both the borrower and their husband. The woman had taken a loan out to pay for her husband's hospital care. Unfortunately he died 11 days before our visit. Hopefully her life insurance is in order. If it is, she will get more than enough to repay the loan and live on for a little while. If not, she will really struggle.

Ujjivan Center Meeting 1

We visited Ujjivan because it is a Micro Finance Institution (MFI) that works with Grameen. Ujjivan services the urban poor, with many of its customers in the Bangalor area.  It is managed very well, and in fact was the top 2011 MFI in India. Having seen their operations, I can understand why they won this award. Grameen is working with Ujjivan through their Human Capital Center. Peg Ross, who traveled with us to India is responsible for this program. The idea is to develop middle mangers in the Micro Finance Industry to ensure that programs will continue to be scalable. Ujjivan has been the perfect partner in testing this program. They have been extremely supportive of the program, and have seen real results in the 3 months since the pilot training program was completed.

After meeting with the program participants yesterday, we went to several Ujjivan Center meetings and heard amazing stories about how the micro loans are really helping people. In the first center we went to, many of the loans were for education. People were especially excited to send their kids to English medium schools. We also heard about loans for family health care problems, home improvement, and many business loans. It was really exciting.  One interesting point all the ladies made is that they were likely going to get the personal and family loans from money lenders if Ujjivan were not providing them with loans. Money lenders generally charge between 60-120% and are know to use very corsive methods to ensure repayment. By getting loans from Ujjiavn, the families are able to move forward with debt that they can afford.

Here are some pictures from the first meeting. Note that the women sit in their lending groups. There are 5 women per group. The group leader of the first group is the center leader. The groups all give their repayment to the center leader. She counts it, notes it all down and then gives the money to the Ujjivan loan officer. The loan officer then recounts the money and records it in Ujjivan's records. At the beginning of each meeting the participants all recite the Ujjivan pledge. Money is then collect. Then the groups have a chance to talk to the Ujjivan representative about any questions or concerns. Participants are fined for being late, and are fined more for lack of attendance. They take these meetings very seriously. The meeting we went to was very active with lively discussion.