Hindsight - some thoughts on coordinating the Lanka Mahila Samiti's Small Enterprise Development Programme
Hindsight can be quite uncomfortable as those of my generation are keenly aware. In the current context when microfinance seems to be endangering the lives (200 plus women have committed suicide because of their inability to payback microcredit loans), livelihoods and wellbeing of many rural women and their families, and where the limited vision of the Microfinance and Credit Regulatory Authority Act is likely to exacerbate the situation, my own engagement in the early 1980s implementing the Lanka Mahila Samiti’s Small Enterprise Development Project for Rural Women (SEDP), funded by USAID, makes me feel somewhat complicit in this rather egregious situation. In this short article, I would like to recall the spirit of the SEDP and its impact on the participating women. I bel iev e this will provide a historical understanding that could be absent from the analysis of microfinance delivery or from the lived experience of the women imprisoned in the financial vi...