The Voice of Creative Research

Evaluating the Socio-Economic Impact of Microfinance on Rural Development in Uttar Pradesh

2025-10-16T02:21:00+00:00

This article evaluates the socio-economic impact of microfinance on rural development in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India, drawing on recent national and state-level evidence from the Self-Help Group–Bank Linkage Programme (SHG–BLP) and the microfinance industry (NBFC-MFIs, banks, SFBs). Using secondary data from NABARD’s Status of Microfinance in India 2023–24, MFIN Micrometer 2023–24 and 2024–25, the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY–NRLM) management information system, and public financial inclusion statistics (PMJDY), the study assesses pathways through which microfinance influences income generation, women’s empowerment, financial inclusion, enterprise formation, and resilience. State-wide analysis is complemented with a district-aware lens that references programmatic outreach in Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Sitapur, Hardoi, and Prayagraj—districts that feature prominently in Uttar Pradesh’s recent ‘Zero Poverty’ campaign—while interpreting results as representative of the state rather than single-district case studies. The SHG–BLP expanded to 144.22 lakh savings-linked SHGs nationally in 2023–24, with ₹2.09 lakh crore disbursed by banks to 54.82 lakh SHGs; the microfinance universe’s gross loan portfolio reached ₹4.34 lakh crore serving 7.8 crore unique borrowers as of March 2024. Parallel gains in financial inclusion are reflected in 8.14 crore PMJDY accounts in UP, though inactivity remains a policy concern. Against this backdrop, the paper synthesizes evidence on socio-economic outcomes and contextual risks—over‑indebtedness, interest rate sensitivity, delinquency pockets, and operational vulnerabilities—before offering policy implications for integrating microfinance with livelihoods, skilling, market linkages, and digital rails. The study concludes that microfinance is a necessary but not sufficient driver of rural development: its impact is maximized when credit is bundled with capability building, social intermediation (through SHGs and federations), and convergence with public schemes (NRLM, MGNREGS, PMEGP, and value-chain programs).

Postmodernism in Selected Contemporary British Novels

2025-10-31T09:16:40+00:00

This article critically examines the continuing influence of postmodernism on contemporary British fiction through an analysis of selected novels by Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, and Peter Ackroyd. It investigates how these writers employ postmodern strategies—fragmentation, metafiction, magic realism, non-linear narrative, and intertextuality—to interrogate the constructed nature of history, identity, and reality in a globalized, plural world. Drawing on postmodern literary theory, the study analyses how these texts foreground uncertainty, ambiguity, and cultural fragmentation as defining conditions of late modernity. Barnes’s England, England satirizes the commodification of national identity through the hyperreal reconstruction of Britain’s past; Rushdie’s Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights fuses myth and history to question the binaries of reason and faith; Winterson’s The Stone Gods reconfigures gender and environmental consciousness through a cyclical, non-linear narrative; and Ackroyd’s The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde exemplifies historiographic metafiction to expose the instability of historical truth. The article concludes that postmodernism remains a vital critical framework for understanding how contemporary British fiction reimagines the relationship among culture, identity, and narrative in the twenty-first century, offering alternative epistemologies for an increasingly fragmented and interconnected world.

Negotiating Culture and Identity: Diasporic Sensibility and East–West Encounters in Kamala Markandaya’s Novels

2025-10-31T09:21:06+00:00

Kamala Markandaya (1924–2004) remains one of the most perceptive chroniclers of postcolonial India’s encounter with modernity, nationalism, and diasporic consciousness. Her fiction intricately explores the dialectic between Eastern and Western sensibilities, tradition and modernity, and individual and collective identities. This paper examines three of her major novels—Some Inner Fury (1955), Possession (1963), and The Nowhere Man (1972)—to analyze how Markandaya transforms personal relationships into metaphors of cultural negotiation and identity formation. In Some Inner Fury, the collision of love and politics during India’s nationalist movement dramatizes the moral and emotional turmoil of cross-cultural attachments under colonial pressure. Possession allegorizes the dynamics of colonial domination and spiritual resistance through the relationship between the British patron Lady Caroline and the Indian artist Valmiki, revealing the moral limits of cultural appropriation. The Nowhere Man extends this inquiry to the diasporic context, portraying exile and racial hostility in postwar Britain through the tragic isolation of Srinivas, an Indian immigrant whose humanity transcends the confines of nationality and race. Across these narratives, Markandaya’s diasporic sensibility emerges as deeply humanistic—rooted in Indian values yet responsive to the complexities of global modernity. The study argues that her fiction articulates a sustained meditation on belonging, displacement, and intercultural understanding, thereby securing her position as a crucial voice in postcolonial Indian English literature.

Hybridity and Memory: Inclusive Identity Constructs in Naomi Shihab Nye’s Diasporic Verse

2025-10-31T09:27:11+00:00

The present article explores how Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry navigates cultural identity. It looks closely at Making a Fist (1995), My Father and the Fig Tree (2002) and Different Ways to Pray (2006). Using ideas from postcolonial and multicultural theorists like Stuart Hall, Homi K. Bhabha, and Charles Taylor, the paper discusses how Nye’s vivid images, memory, and everyday moments show Arab American identity as a changing and active process. The analysis suggests that Nye’s poems go beyond describing displacement or nostalgia. For Nye, differences among cultures and identity are to be celebrated and received with a sense of inclusion among individuals and communities. The study shows that Nye keeps and reshapes Arab American identity through memory, daily experiences, and symbols. Her poetry is an important part of American literature and multicultural conversations.

Haunted by Displacement: Cultural Alienation and the Search for Belonging in Amy Tan’s Saving Fish from Drowning

2025-10-31T09:44:42+00:00

Amy Tan’s Saving Fish from Drowning (2006) represents cultural alienation and the search for belonging, with particular reference to how displacement affects both individual and collective identity. With the detailed depiction of the American tourists and their travels to Burma, the novel highlights the resistant response to Western fictions imposed on non-Western cultures. The apparition storyteller, Bibi Chen, serves as both a spectator and an uprooted subject, outlining the disengagement experienced by diasporic people who possess different social circles without completely having a place to any. The visitors, in spite of the fact that advantaged, ended up typical of social pariahs who stay dazzled by the complexities of the arrive they navigate. The paper analyses the voices of the displaced diasporic identities in a multicultural space and the intricate nature of cultural complexities in identity formation in a globalized, yet fragmented world.