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This paper reviews the current level and pattern of access to finance for India's rural poor and examines some of the key microfinance approaches in India, taking a close look at the most dominant among these, the Self Help Group (SHG) Bank Linkage initiative. It empirically analyzes the success with which SHG Bank Linkage has been able to reach the poor, examines the reasons behind this, and the lessons learned. The analysis in the paper draws heavily on a recent rural access to finance survey of 6,000 households in India, undertaken by the authors. The main findings and implications of the paper are as follows: India's rural poor currently have very little access to finance from formal sources. Microfinance approaches have tried to fill the gap. Among these, the growth of SHG Bank Linkage has been particularly remarkable, but outreach remains modest in terms of the proportion of poor households served. The paper recommends that, if SHG Bank Linkage is to be scaled-up to offer mass access to finance for the rural poor, then much more attention will need to be paid towards: the promotion of high quality SHGs that are sustainable, clear targeting of clients, and ensuring that banks linked to SHGs price loans at cost-covering levels. At the same time, the paper argues that, in an economy as vast and varied as India's, there is scope for diverse microfinance approaches to coexist. Private sector microfinanciers need to acquire greater professionalism, and the government, too, can help by creating a flexible architecture for microfinance innovations, including through a more enabling policy, legal and regulatory framework. Finally, the paper argues that, while microfinance can, at minimum, serve as a quick way to deliver finance to the poor, the medium-term strategy to scale-up access to finance for the poor should be to 'graduate' microfinance clients to formal financial institutions. The paper offers some suggestions on what it would take to reform these institutions with an eye to improving access for the poor.

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We study the aggradation and incision of the Alaknanda River Valley during the late Pleistocene and Holocene. The morphostratigraphy in the river valley at Deoprayag shows the active riverbed, a cut terrace, and a fill terrace. The sedimentary fabric of the fill terrace comprises four lithofacies representing 1) riverbed accretion, 2) locally derived debris fan, 3) the deposits of waning floods and 4) palaeoflood records. The sedimentation style, coupled with geochemical analysis and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating, indicate that this terrace formed in a drier climate and the river valley aggraded in two phases during 21–18 ka and 13–9 ka. During these periods, sediment supply was relatively higher. Incision began after 10 ka in response to a strengthened monsoon and aided by increase of the tectonic gradient. The cut terrace formed at ~ 5 ka during a phase of stable climate and tectonic quiescence. The palaeoflood records suggest wetter climate 200–300 yr ago when the floods originated in the upper catchment of the Higher Himalaya and in the relatively drier climate ~ 1.2 ka when locally derived sediments from the Lesser Himalaya dominated flood deposits. Maximum and minimum limits of bedrock incision rate at Deoprayag are 2.3 mm/a and 1.4 mm/a.

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We provide the first continuous Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) climate record for the higher Himalayas (Kedarnath, India) by analyzing a 14C-dated peat sequence covering the last ~8000 years, with ~50 years temporal resolution. The ISM variability inferred using various proxies reveal striking similarity with the Greenland ice core (GISP2) temperature record and rapid denitrification changes recorded in the sediments off Peru. The Kedarnath record provides compelling evidence for a reorganization of the global climate system taking place at ~5.5 ka BP possibly after sea level stabilization and the advent of inter-annual climate variability governed by the modern ENSO phenomenon. The ISM record also captures warm-wet and cold-dry conditions during the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age, respectively.

Previous studies suggest that the Homeb silts of the Kuiseb valley, Namibia (i) accumulated in a dune-dammed lake, (ii) are end-point deposits, (iii) represent an aggrading river bed, and (iv) are slackwater deposits. Thus, they have been used alternatively as evidence of past drier conditions or past wetter conditions. Lithostratigraphic analysis of two sediment sequences at Homeb indicates sedimentation by aggradation of the Kuiseb River triggered by a transition from an arid to humid climate. OSL ages for the sequences were obtained by the SAR protocol on aliquots of 9.6-mm and 4.0-mm diameter and on single grains. Four-millimeter aliquot minimum ages closely approximate the single-grain minimum ages and are younger than 9.6-mm aliquot minimum and central ages. Based on these results, the small-aliquot (4-mm) approach appears to provide ages comparable to those obtained by the more laborious and time-consuming single-grain method. Minimum ages indicate rapid deposition of the Homeb Silts in at least two episodes centered at ∼15 ka and ∼6 ka during climate transitions from arid to humid. Flash floods eroded the valley fills during slightly more arid conditions.