Jean-Michel Servet’s latest book, La vraie révolution du microcrédit (Microcredit’s Real Revolution, 2015), is a must read. It is a sequel to his earlier highly influential book Banquiers aux pieds nus (Barefoot Bankers, 2006), which critically examined three decades of the expansion of microcredit. This current book extends his previous book by navigating readers through a forty-year, crises-ridden journey of microcredit. Much like Jude Fernando’s (ed) book Microfinance: Perils and Prospects, reviewed in this journal (Neverson, 2013), Microcredit’s Real Revolution shows that the last four decades has witnessed the global spread of microcredit as a concept in development studies and as a strategy in development policy. At the same time, the world witnessed the frequent repackaging of the concept, with the same neoliberal logic. At first, it was called microcredit, next microfinance, and then financial inclusion. The pomp and pageantry that accompanied various events linked to this concept and the personalities involved are a testimony to the general acceptability of this concept. Little wonder that Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 for their work which has helped to ‘create economic and social development from below.’

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Keywords

Microcredit’s, Real Revolution