“Technology can be dangerous for the marginalised and the oppressed, if viewed only within a monochromatic perspective of business plans and financial returns.

Micro credit is an area that faces a clear threat. Presently, thrift Self Help Groups provide credit to themselves at a ‘reasonable' Rs. 2 per Rs. 100 or 24%.

ICT instruments will allow banks, for example, to harness the reach of small shopkeepers. In the near future, you will be able to pick up some credit along with your Agarbatis, Bajra, Candles and Dal! Kiosk-based banking will, for now, need the local low-cost ‘reach' that SHG's provide, and kiosk loans will be offered at comparable interest rates.

But once kiosk-based banking is established, it will need to compete with other banking players. At this time, with systems and infrastructure already in place, reduced interest rates will provide the real manoeuvring space for banks. And where will that leave our SHG's?

SHG's, based on a self-help philosophy, are used by women, people with disabilities, agricultural labourers, people with HIV/AIDS, as expressions of solidarity which provide psycho-social support. Savings and credit by individuals in the SHG was an innovation, which allowed its intrinsic capitalist energy to power the group's ‘socialist' goals.

But wherever credit, rather than psycho-social support has become paramount, the growing power of women runs the risk of being channelised into institutional processes which do not empower them as a class. Micro Finance Institutions have already started eroding the power of women with their monochromatic perspective, and have brought us to the edge of a slippery slope. Kiosk-based banking has the potential to tip us over.”