How Microfinance Changes the Lives of Millions

While Banerjee correctly takes some of the critics to task for taking a few studies and amplifying them to reject all of microfinance, he/she makes the same mistake by taking a narrow band of critique too broadly.

The substantive critique that is happening is not of microfinance in all its richness and variation but of the myth perpetuated primarily by the practitioners that microfinance is synonymous with women borrowers escaping from poverty.

Only when the industry is willing to not be defensive and drop the prevailing marketing narrative can we get more focus on the other pieces of microfinance that have some evidence of greater positive impact, like savings and helping micro-businesses become medium-size businesses with employees and profits.

While I am only approaching this from a layman's perspective, I think Banerjee is right to question the op-ed in the Globe that we should start thinking macro not micro.
The problem seems to be that all we have been doing is thinking 'macro' and as a result the 'micro' gets pushed out of the way - and in the process entire communities. While there may be much hype around microfinance, I think it can be largely justified since it strives for rigorous, democratic mechanisms in banking transactions - the opposite of how banking & finance normally function at the 'macro' level.