The Full Form of MYRADA is‍ Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency.

Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency (MYRADA) is an NGO that has had extensive experience in incubating, developing and managing savings and credit programmes in Southern India. Realizing the shortcomings and inadequacy of the existing system of delivery of formal credit the poor, Myrada experimented with many local institutional arrangements in providing credit delivery systems to the very poor. These included local cooperatives, rural bank branches, Voluntary Development Agencies etc. One common feature that ran through most of these earlier approaches/models was that the target community formed a group, from 15-20 each to the entire community.

As experience mounted, ideal characteristics of a workable group formation strategy emerged: small size, voluntary participation, high initial intervention by NGO, economic and social homogeneity, effective, decentralized and democratic participation, basic knowledge in literacy and numeracy, etc. This was later concretized by forming of Credit Management Groups (CMGs) Such groups helped not only in the usual ‘backward and forward’ linkages, but in sideways linkages as well – that is, support from a group to a family to become economically viable and self-reliant. Asset management was also better administered by groups rather than the individual family or household. Savings from the group was a critical starting point for all activity, creating self-confidence among other things, among the members. More than 4,000 such homogeneous small groups have been formed by MYRADA in South Asia.

These autonomous and voluntary groups fostered the emergence of innovative, appropriate and replicable ideas on a continuing basis by providing the people opportunities to come together and to share and learn from each other’s experience. Latent values of group support, traditional to most societies, came to the fore with such groups.

A key feature of the savings and credit programmes of MYRADA is the Group’s Common Fund (CF). Membership fees, regular savings, fines imposed for not having satisfied limits in savings or loan repayment, interest payments and other sources are used to build up the fund. The CF also demonstrates the Group’s seriousness in credit management. This is used to convince Banks, and other financial institutions to lend to the group who will then onlend, in small amounts, to its members. Loan disbursal/recovery, terms and conditions etc. are decided by the group itself, with advice in training, suggestions from NGOs and Banks etc. Figure 5.3 explains the growth and utilization of the CF within a group.

The significance of MYRADA’s programmes can be seen in the involvement of all three primary actors of the Triangle for group loans, deposit mobilization, formation of small groups (in three stages: ‘formation’, ‘stabilization’, and ’empowerment’), sensitization and training of bankers etc. Roles are also provided for the international NGO and research and training institutions for monitoring and evaluation, grants and loans, information sharing etc.