ABSTRACT
This chapter is an ethnographic account of what happens when multiple credit organizations offer loans simultaneously in the same locality. It explores how microcredit organizations compete with each other for the same clients by appropriating neoliberal policies while also targeting richer clients for profit to strengthen their own sustainability. The chapter also explores how Grameen Bank (GB) micro-lending officials perceive the GB microcredit programme against a background whereby a number of competing programmes offer similar amounts of credit in the same locality. It focuses on how microcredit organizations in the villages of Zelegaon and Nodigaon deselect the poor and attempt to cultivate the financially well-off families as their clients. The maturation of the microfinance industry has been accompanied by claims that the industry is abandoning its mission to serve the poor. Competition has led the microcredit non-governmental organization (NGOs) to take more complicated action, including unprincipled competitive practices.
