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Monday, January 31, 2011

ICOMFI 2011 - Pondicherry University


The International Conference on Microfinance has become a regular fixture of the Pondicherry University calendar.  And it was successfully held for the fourth successive year from 27th to 29th of January, 2011, this year.  The conference organizers have been zealously endeavoring to make this truly international in flavor and content. Backed by able support from JAK Tareen, the Vice-Chancellor, the highlight of this year’s conference was the inaugural issue of an International Journal on Microfinance Research.  The Vice Chancellor has also promised support in setting up a Center for Microfinance Research.  Hopefully, these initiatives will make subsequent conferences a lot more useful to researchers, academicians and the industry.
A very curious phenomenon that was witnessed this year was a conspicuous absence of sponsors for the event.  Barring NABARD and Indian Bank who have been loyal supporters of this event year after year, it was quite strange to see that the entire place was bereft of banners and hoardings, one usually associates with conferences.  One wonders whether this was by design or a curious case of a combination of delayed impact of the recession combined with the turmoil this sector has been going through since November, 2010. 
Having organized three editions prior to getting here, perhaps I had set my bar a little too high, from a content-perspective; I was clearly disappointed.  While the thrust of the discussions, Financial Inclusion and Financial Literacy by itself, was a little too broad, the content and the topics discussed were even more unimaginative.  While most panelists were eminent people with several years of experience in the sector, it seemed that they were all from the same school of thought – a recipe guaranteed to kill even a soupcon of debate.  It would have been interesting to have had someone from an opposing school of thought – one that would have provoked a discussion, or even some serious interaction among the audience.   What made the proceedings even more monotonous was the presence of the same set of panelists who came up on stage to speak about practically the same subject, albeit with different headings…if one was titled Self Help Groups and Financial Inclusion, the other Financial Literacy and SHG…the same content got repeated with varying degrees of verbosity…ad nauseum.
Clearly, one area which we will definitely expect to see a quantum improvement in the following years will be the Technical Sessions.  For an international conference in which the accepted papers get published as a book volume (with an ISBN), one might expect a much higher standard of research papers.  Instead, it was quite disappointing to see blatant plagiarism, meaningless surveys, poorly formulated hypotheses and unconvincing data models pass for research.  In a sense this highlights one of the serious flaws of our academic institutions – the poor quality of research.  One hopes that such papers do not get into the International Journal of Microfinance Research.  And one fervently hopes that the setting up of a Center for Microfinance Research will allow for more serious research to take place in this Central University.
Perhaps, the best part of this conference for me was Dr. Detlev Holloh’s inaugural speech.  Dr. Holloh, Director, GIZ, in his speech laced with references to Mahatma Gandhi, Vinobha Bhave and the Sarvodaya movement, showed he was more in touch with agrarian rustic India than several of his Indian peers.  If his dissection of the problem was scientific, the proposed solution seemed almost too obvious.  One sincerely hopes that his fervent plea to strengthen the agricultural sector will be heard by the policy makers and that a more holistic program shall emerge which will allow the resurgence of microfinance as a poverty alleviation device – one that can be truly self-sustainable.
I had a good time. I only wished I had also learned something more.