Reflections on the Theory of Impact for Mobile Instant Credit

Mobile Instant Credit (MIC) is rapidly growing as a financial inclusion tool, attracting policy and research interest. However, its impact remains understudied, with a weak Theory of Change. The blog highlights three overlooked impact areas and calls for insights from microfinance research.
How Should the RBI Respond to the Microfinance Crisis?

Debt distress among microfinance borrowers is on the rise, sufficiently so that it may be characterised as a crisis for the sector. This is driven by factors across the supply- and demand-sides, as well as factors inherent in the nature of the credit cycle, where periodic booms and busts have been present throughout history. To address this, we propose two sets of recommendations for the regulator: a set of recommendations that can be initiated in the short-term and another set that can be initiated over the medium-term.
Ideas that Shape Policymaking: The Role of Think Tanks in India

In this blog, we will highlight some interesting facts about agricultural households from the survey through a set of questions that can help contextualise the financial lives of farmers and their families.
Submission by Dvara Research to the Ministry of Finance as part of Pre-Budget Consultation with the honorable Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Jan 2nd 2025

The Government of India called for pre-budget consultations in early January 2025. Dvara Research was one of the invitees, and we are once again grateful to policy makers for reposing trust in our work. In the past as well, Dvara Research has been a partner and advisor of choice for key policy-making bodies in the country.
Know Your Kisan – A Peek into the Financial Lives of Indian Farmers through the NAFIS Survey 2021-22

In this blog, we will highlight some interesting facts about agricultural households from the survey through a set of questions that can help contextualise the financial lives of farmers and their families.
How rural households manage their financial lives- Insights from the NAFIS Report 2021-22

This blog presents key insights from the second round of the survey report, NAFIS 2021-22, and finds that the rural households’ investment portfolio continues to be dominated by physical assets, which is in contrast with the predominance of formal debt on the liabilities side of the household balance sheets.
Exploring the Phenomenon of Debt Distress and Possible Solutions

This chapter emphasises the realities of the sector that create a feedback loop, where lenders are incentivised to over-lend and borrowers to over-borrow, until crisis intervenes as a necessary and often tragic correction
How have household balance sheets changed post the pandemic? A descriptive analysis of household portfolios using CMIE’s Consumer Pyramid Household Survey Dataset

According to a report by Crif High Mark, microfinance loans overdue for up to 31-180 days increased from 2.1% in March 2024 to 2.7% in June 2024. While there could be several supply-side factors at play for the rise in defaults, in this blog we direct our attention to reviewing the household side of the story by assessing the changes in household balance sheets post the COVID-19 pandemic.
Need a more flexible AePS environment

While the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) has emerged as the foundational technology enabling cash-in cash-out (CICO) across the country, efforts by bad actors to defraud banking customers through it continue to be a pressing concern
UPI’s democratised cashless payments but not grievance redressal

Medium-to-low digital proficiency users experience anxiety when they have to use in-app mechanisms to deal with problems. It has got to do with designs that do not account for user proficiency and expectations. A few changes could uplift the experience for all users