| Summary: | This article uses Bourdieu and Giddens' perspective of agency to investigate an antipoverty programme of the Indian government that relies on self-help groups for the disbursal of microcredit. Multiple actors impact and refract away from the official agenda of the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) scheme in Gujarat. Instead of working towards entrepreneurialism through self-help, actors use the SGSY as a vehicle for populism, rent-seeking and as a saving scheme for children's weddings. Through the agency of these actors, practised within a specific historical, structural and dispositional context, the structures of patriarchy and neo-liberalism are reproduced in everyday socio-economic and political life. However, hints of structural change, for example in women's control over earnings via access to banks, are also evident. Evidence from the SGSY scheme is used to highlight the ways in which microcredit can simultaneously empower and restrict the lives of female beneficiaries. © 2013 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes.
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