ABSTRACT
Microcredit—the extension of small amounts of collateral-free institutional loans to jointly liable poor group members for their self-employment and income generation—is a Grameen Bank innovation. In the 1980s the programmatic success of the microcredit scheme of Grameen Bank among poor women in rural Bangladesh became a demonstration of a successful equitable and sustainable development initiative. The Grameen Bank is a bank established with the objective of extending credit to poor people in rural Bangladesh who have no physical collateral. The Grameen Bank lends to groups of borrowers, rather than to individuals, through a hierarchical structure. The bank workers, policymakers, and even academics in Bangladesh usually generalize about Grameen microlending through quantitative representation. In the 1990s, the microcredit approach of the Grameen Bank has attracted even wider international interest and is being incorporated in mainstream development agendas. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
