Independent Research and Policy Advocacy

Publications

Blogs

We produce blogs to discuss new research findings, ongoing projects, and even personal reflections on the research process. Our blogs are written for a variety of audiences, including other researchers, policymakers, practitioners, financial service providers, grassroots organizations, impact investors and the public. The format is simple and easy to grasp. The language is straightforward, and the tone is non-academic. Our blogs can be of varying lengths. We choose to write a blog when we don’t want to do a full- fledged study or follow a rigorous research process. Blogs may contain opinions and they can also be based on experiences. Some of our blogs may just share some observations, learnings, or challenges.

Our Work

April 4, 2025 | Dvara Research

On 13 December 2024, the Ministry of Finance, Government of India (MoF) released the draft Banning of Unregulated Lending Activities (BULA) Act. This aligns with recommendations made in the Report of the Working Group on Digital Lending.

March 28, 2025 | Dvara Research

In this blog, we delve further to uncover the institutional, cultural, and evolutionary factors underpinning the challenges of engendering formal savings among LIHs.

February 5, 2025 | Dvara Research

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.

January 21, 2025 | Dvara Research

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.

December 20, 2024 | Dvara Research

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.

December 19, 2024 | Dvara Research

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.

November 7, 2024 | Dvara Research

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.

October 16, 2024 | Dvara Research

This blog presents a self-assessment checklist targeted at UI/UX designers and AA product managers, enabling them to surface gaps in the design of their consent artefacts especially in relation to the vulnerable customer.

October 4, 2024 | Dvara Research

This is the second in a series of blogs which describe our efforts towards building an effective in-app GRM for India’s consumers

September 20, 2024 | Dvara Research

This is the first in a series of blogs which describe our efforts towards building an effective in-app GRM for India’s UPI users