Commentary: Neoliberal Landscapes of Deception: Detroit,Ford Field,and the Ford Motor Company

Microfinance is often presented as a solution to rural poverty. However, increasingly, many countries across the world are turning to it as a mechanism for dealing with the contingencies arising from the marketization of basic services and shrinking welfare provisions. Using examples of urban microfinance from India, this essay shows how, through microfinance, market rationalities are increasingly finding their way into food and housing provision for the urban poor and are displacing social relations that have traditionally sustained them.