In December 2003 I traveled to the state of West Bengal in eastern India as part of my doctoral research on microfinance programs and health. Microfinance programs typically offer savings and credit opportunities to rural poor populations not otherwise served by formal financial institutions. Since its inception in Bangladesh thirty years ago, microfinance has been widely recognized as a powerful tool for alleviating poverty and improving health outcomes for the world's poorest communities, and particularly for women and children. Models for microfinance provision have proliferated around the world; many are women-focused and use group-lending techniques to minimize risk and to develop and leverage social capital among borrowers. I am particularly interested in the linkages between microfinance programs and increased contraceptive use, reduced fertility, and improved child nutrition and family food security. I am also interested in the mechanisms by which microfinance programs affect health and demographic outcomes-hypothesized pathways include changing the costs and benefits of children and of women's time; empowerment; and social learning and diffusion.

West Bengal is a particularly compelling place in which to study these questions. Sharing both a border and a language with Bangladesh, the state is influenced by Bangladesh's long history of microfinance programs. At the same time, the government and non-governmental organizations of West Bengal have developed a unique format for women-focused microfinance programs known as the Self-Help Group movement. Self-Help Groups (SHGs) have proliferated in recent years, and the elected Marxist government is relying on the system as an inexpensive poverty alleviation and health promotion strategy.

My visit included ten days in Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta), the capital of West Bengal and one of the most vibrant places in India. In Kolkata I met with representatives of the state development agency as well as with staff from NGOs including CARE West Bengal, UNICEF, and the Institute for Social Science Research. These discussions helped to frame my research hypotheses and to prepare me for my visit to Swarnivar, a small integrated development NGO located in Andharmanik, a village 50 kilometers northeast of Kolkata. Swanrivar was founded in 1989 by Sujit Sinha, an extraordinary Bengali engineer who returned to India after earning a Ph.D. in the United States. Swanirvar means "self-sufficient" in Bengali; the organization's goal is to address comprehensive development needs in a focused geographic area of rural West Bengal that is characterized by high population density, high rates of landlessness and outmigration, and a history of high-yield agriculture that has taken a toll on land productivity. Through integrated program efforts in the areas of microfinance, pre-primary and primary education, health care, youth brigades, sustainable agriculture, and self-governance. Swanirvar is helping to build a vibrant local economy, strong local government, and common cultural identity that together present an attractive alternative to urban migration.

Swanirvar's rapidly growing microfinance program encourages small groups of women to form savings cooperatives in which group members deposit small amounts of savings on a regular basis. Group members may then draw on the funds for loans to launch or expand household enterprises, repair or upgrade homes, or recover from economic or environmental shocks. These loans allow women to avoid local money lenders who charge exceedingly high rates of interest that often result in loan default and loss of land or other productive assets. Over the last ten years Swanirvar has supported the formation of more than 300 self-help groups in 43 villages with a total membership of over 5,000 women. The program has been so successful that the groups have formed a federation comprising twenty clusters and are in the process of spinning off the federation into a stand-alone, financially self-sufficient and sustainable organization. Swanirvar's microfinance program is a partner in the CASHE (Credit and Savings for Household Enterprises) program of CARE West Bengal that aims to use self-help groups to improve not only women's financial well-being but also their health, the health of their families, and their social and political empowerment. Sujit Sinha has also been tapped for several state and national commissions on microfinance and integrated development.

I had the great good fortune to spend four days in Andharmanik at Swanirvar's office and guesthouse. Thanks to the generosity Sujit Sinha and several other Swanirvar staff members, I interviewed two self-help groups, representatives from seven other groups, and four "animators" hired by Swanirvar to support SHG formation and operation. The SHG members were extremely articulate about the specific benefits they saw in SHG participation, and were also able to locate their experiences in the SHG in the broader context of social, economic and cultural change in rural West Bengal. I visited several homes in the village and saw firsthand the kinds of enterprises that women are starting with the credit accessed through SHGs. My time with Swanirvar allowed me to significantly refine my hypotheses about the various mechanisms through which microfinance programs operate in this context. For example, the social influence and diffusion pathway was clearly evident in a comment made by an SHG member about the promotion of local child immunization camps: "What one woman knows today, fifteen learn tomorrow."

I am very grateful to the Bixby Program for underwriting this important trip to India. I look forward to future visits and hope to generate research findings that will help groups like Swarnirvar continue to tailor development programs to the needs of rural poor women in India and around the world.