The Micro Finance Development and Regulation Bill, 2007, expected to be introduced in this session of Parliament, has run into rough weather. The Left parties have opposed the Bill on the grounds that besides hurting the “interests of the poorest” and the self-help groups, the Government is paving the way for Foreign Direct Investment in this sector.“We are against the Bill as it hurts the interests of the poorest and the self-help groups in a number of ways. The Government also seems to be eyeing for FDI in this sector,” Politburo member Brinda Karat told The Indian Express. “That the Bill is clearly made to protect the interests of the MFIs is evident from the fact that the question of the ceiling on the interest rates has not been tackled in the Bill,” Karat said. “At a time when even the public sector banks are interested in giving credit to the rural poor, such a Bill will only add to their woes.”The CPI (M) feels that the no ceiling on the interest rate is because the World Bank and the supporters of MFIs said that “these institutions should make profit and no subsidy should be given to the poor”. The self-help groups have been formed under the aegis of the government, non-government organisations, women’s movements and cooperatives. These groups fall under the category of Micro Finance Organisations, a subject of the regulation of this Bill, and has already been cleared by the Cabinet.In fact, the Left-ruled states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura have a great number of such groups, which for the party is an important tool in “mobilising women and addressing the issue of poverty”. In Kerala, the Kudumbashree programme has 177,645 neighbourhood groups, Tripura has 23,064 SHGs mostly promoted by the government and West Bengal has 4.2 lakh SHGs and has a woman cabinet minister for SHGs.
