For three decades, microfinance spread across Asia on the promise that small loans could unlock human potential trapped only by a lack of capital. But poverty, it turns out, is not a single missing ingredient — it is a compound condition of missing skills, infrastructure, markets, and stability that money alone cannot remedy. Across Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, and Pakistan, millions of households borrowed to survive rather than to grow, and found themselves indebted rather than liberated. The story of microfinance is ultimately a story about how even well-intentioned solutions can fail when t
Microfinance's Asian Promise: Why Small Loans Haven't Lifted the Poor
Millions of poor households across Asia trapped in debt cycles, with vulnerable farmers risking loss of land holdings used as loan collateral.