The successful functioning of micro-finance institutions in several developing countries has fostered the rise of a new economic ethic. MFIs have helped in the successful inculcation of the saving habit, encouraged loan repayment as per a pre-set schedule, ensured the separation of the public and private spheres and overseen the commercialisation of economic life. Under this economic ethic, more than hierarchy or other traditional demarcations of status, it is money, the possession of it and its use in commercial commodity production that forms the measure of most things ? in determining transactions, relationships and status.