Augmenting the Value of Microfinance: The ‘Plus’ Services of Annapurna Pariwar

Tara Nair ()
Additional contact information
Tara Nair: Work Fair and Free Foundation

A chapter in Building Pathways to Women’s Empowerment, 2026, pp 253-272 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The organisational growth and diversification of Annapurna Pariwar since the mid-1970s bears testimony to the vision of its leadership that access to credit, though is a foundational right of poor and resourceless women, they cannot move out of poverty just by availing credit. There are more acute constraints arising out the structure of societal institutions embedded as they are with gender norms and social norms rooted in patriarchy. They severely constrain women’s capabilities to build a life of value for themselves and their families. Absence of affordable and reliable child care, access to children’s education, and timely and affordable healthcare are the most critical human development deficits that burden poor households and push them back to chronic poverty. Annapurna Pariwar has systematically integrated services to address these constraints over the years and created a conglomeration of organisations consisting cooperatives (micro credit, early child care), non-profit companies (micro insurance/old age security, digital solutions), and public charitable trusts (education, research). Annapurna Pariwar’s impact on the community and women, hence, needs to be assessed by analysing how these various value adding interventions have interacted with each other and with the larger systemic shifts occurred over a very critical phase in India’s microcredit history. This chapter is an attempt to do such an analysis

Keywords: Microcredit; Annapurna Pariwar; Plus services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-95-7159-8_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789819571598

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-7159-8_11

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in India Studies in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().