AN IMPERATIVE NEED FOR A NEW SOCIAL ORDER IN MICROFINANCE COMMUNITY - TOWARDS USHERING IN A RESILIENT ECO-SYSTEM IN THE BATTLE AGAINST CORONA PANDEMIC

Article Type: Research Article

Article Citation: Ali Saleh Alshebami, and Dr. V. Rengarajan. (2020). AN IMPERATIVE NEED FOR A NEW SOCIAL ORDER IN MICROFINANCE COMMUNITY - TOWARDS USHERING IN A RESILIENT ECO-SYSTEM IN THE BATTLE AGAINST CORONA PANDEMIC. International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH, 8(8), 107-123. https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v8.i8.2020.986

Received Date: 04 August 2020

Accepted Date: 24 August 2020

Keywords:

Covid-19 Pandemic

Health Vulnerability

Economic Deprivation

Liquidity Crunch

Preventive Governance

Social Capital

Participatory Approach
ABSTRACT

The battle against corona does not confine to only economic resurgence by supplying microcredit to the poor clients in both demand and supply sides of microfinance sector but how to protect them from the offense of the corona in the health perspectives. In other words, imperatively it is warranted that the survival of human beings in the pandemic in the Microfinance sector merits attention on priority in the revival package.  It is therefore surmised that in the process of ushering in a new social order with a resilient ecology in the Microfinance sector, there is a dilemma in awarding priority either for economic revival through the flow of microcredit for releasing financial stress or human survival with the resilient physical capability in the process of recovery from the pandemic. The study, based on secondary data, concludes that Microfinance actors need to consider that economic revival bundle should not confine with a fresh dose of microcredit alone and recovery of it collectively or individually in Microfinance sector without synchronizing a social-oriented bundle in the micro-financial package towards nurturing on health care awareness and for the obedience of obligatory preventive measures namely social distancing, Face mask, washing hands by the poor clients in the last mile. Any assumption on this issue is dangerous. The latter that guarantees the basic survival of the customers from the Corona pandemic, should precede the former one or get integrated simultaneously with it to generate a resilient ecosystem from interdisciplinary perspectives. Otherwise, another Microfinance crisis is forthcoming.

1.      INTRODUCTION

1.1. THE PROBLEM

The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) is omnipresence and omnipotent. Causing unabated morbidity and mortality globally. Since the end game is unpredictable, it has become formidable tasks to the scientists and the researchers as well in searching a way out from the crisis. Ironically, Corona affects human beings directly and the viral is spread from humans to humans regardless of demographic and geography. Eventually, humanity as a whole is driven to get submerged pathetically in the pandemic challenging two scourges viz health vulnerability and simultaneously economic deprivation due to loss of livelihood. In the case of poor people, the worst impact is that the poor and the poorer in the upper layers in the poverty pyramid is ratcheted to the bottom layer to join the cohort of the poorest. Such a phenomenon of the downfall of the poor to rock bottom in the pyramid is illustratively portrayed in figure No.1 as below: