<P> However, a skeptical approach is advisable when assessing the effectiveness of microcredit . Critics argue that microcredit has not had a positive impact on gender relationships, does not alleviate poverty, has led many borrowers into a debt trap and constitutes a "privatization of welfare". The first randomized evaluation of microcredit, conducted by Esther Duflo and others, showed mixed results: there was no effect on household expenditure, gender equity, education or health, but the number of new businesses increased by one third compared to a control group . </P> <P> Ideas relating to microcredit can be found at various times in modern history, such as the Starr - Bowkett Society . Jonathan Swift inspired the Irish Loan Funds of the 18th and 19th centuries . In the mid-19th century, Individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner wrote about the benefits of numerous small loans for entrepreneurial activities to the poor as a way to alleviate poverty . At about the same time, but independently to Spooner, Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen founded the first cooperative lending banks to support farmers in rural Germany . In the 1950s, Akhtar Hameed Khan began distributing group - oriented credit in East Pakistan . Khan used the Comilla Model, in which credit is distributed through community - based initiatives . The project failed due to the over-involvement of the Pakistani government, and the hierarchies created within communities as certain members began to exert more control over loans than others . </P> <P> The origins of microcredit in its current practical incarnation can be linked to several organizations founded in Bangladesh, especially the Grameen Bank . The Grameen Bank, which is generally considered the first modern microcredit institution, was founded in 1983 by Muhammad Yunus . Yunus began the project in a small town called Jobra, using his own money to deliver small loans at low - interest rates to the rural poor . Grameen Bank was followed by organizations such as BRAC in 1972 and ASA in 1978 . Microcredit reached Latin America with the establishment of PRODEM in Bolivia in 1986; a bank that later transformed into the for - profit BancoSol . Microcredit quickly became a popular tool for economic development, with hundreds of institutions emerging throughout the third world . Though the Grameen Bank was formed initially as a non-profit organization dependent upon government subsidies, it later became a corporate entity and was renamed Grameen II in 2002 . Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work providing microcredit services to the poor . </P> <P> Microcredit organizations were initially created as alternatives to the "loan - sharks" known to take advantage of clients . Indeed, many microlenders began as non-profit organizations and operated with government funds or private subsidies . By the 1980s, however the "financial systems approach," influenced by neoliberalism and propagated by the Harvard Institute for International Development, became the dominant ideology among microcredit organizations . The commercialization of microcredit officially began in 1984 with the formation of Unit Desa (BRI - UD) within the Bank Rakyat Indonesia . Unit Desa offered' kupedes' microloans based on market interest rates . </P>

Microcredit in india comes under which of the following activities