Access to Credit of Meitei Women with Particular Reference to the Marup System

This paper focuses on women’s access to credit in an underdeveloped economy like Manipur. Women face restricted access to credit in underdeveloped economies, particularly because of their lack of ownership of property and other goods needed for production or for collateral purposes. The right to land in law is never implemented. Faced with such limited resources, women go to various informal sources of credit. The paper gives an account of the sources of credit of Meitei women of Manipur, particularly the predominant practice of Manipuri women, the marup system.  Marups are a type of chit funds, rotating savings scheme where women pool together money and take turns to receive the pool each month. Working on institutions of mutual trust and co-operation, such schemes enable women to save and earn some interest on their money as well as facilitate access to finance in times of necessity.  Despite the risks involved and high rates of interest, such schemes proliferate in Manipur and are considered to be better than taking recourse to borrowing from money lenders. The paper finds that reliance on such schemes is necessitated by poor performance of formal financial institutions in providing credit to women of Manipur.  The outreach of microfinance and self-help groups that would provide women with a means to acquire credit to indulge in productive income earning activities is still low. For the majority of Manipuri women, particularly Meitei women, marups form an important source of funds for overall use. These imply lack of access to formal sources of credit of women; hence improving women’s access to credit should be an important development goal.