Subir Roy: Creating wealth at the bottom

The lane in rural Maheshpur, in Jharkhand’s Pakur district, is clean and lined with neatly painted tribal huts. I am led through a low doorway into a cluster of huts around an open courtyard. The ground is wiped spotless, as are the bits of huts’ interiors I can see, seated on a quickly proffered plastic chair. Wooden chairs must be mostly gone. But for the odd child who passes by sizing me up, there seem to be few people around.

They are being rounded up, I am reassured by someone who knows Bipan, the young trainer from Bandhan – the microfinance people – who is taking me around. The other women apparently are out in nearby fields with the men folks harvesting paddy, ripe in the mellow midday sun of late autumn. They take a bit longer to come, quickly finishing their midday meal before gathering in a haphazard circle on the back verandah.

They are all borrowers of Bandhan who have been repaying their one-year loans with alacrity, to get slightly bigger ones in progressing stages, and so have been included in a programme that has lectured them on how to take forward their little ventures and how to manage their savings.

Thirty-year-old Teresa Marandi, mother of two, is now not satisfied with just farming. She has been growing paddy, wheat and vegetables on the family’s 7.5 bighas of land, irrigated by a pump set that can easily access the high water table replenished by the river flowing nearby. She now wants to get into rearing livestock — cows, goats, pigs and poultry. For this she will be seeking a loan of Rs 20,000, up from the Rs 15,000 loan she is currently repaying.

It all began four years ago with a loan of Rs 5,000. The capital enables her to buy fertilisers – diammonium phosphate (DAP) and urea – and good seeds from the government at less than the market rate. It all seems too good to be true, made possible by vital small loans repaid on time and a sarkar that makes available fertilisers and seeds at subsidised rates.

In another part of the extended village lives Murshida Bibi, embarrassed she cannot tell us exactly how old she is. She has built her micro fortune by helping her husband make brooms, for which there seems to be an expanding market. In four years with Bandhan, the annual loan has grown from Rs 1,000 to Rs 14,000. Things are so much better than earlier, when for a living they bought paddy, husked it and sold the rice.

Over time has come a brick-lined home with a thatched roof and a pucca toilet; one daughter has been married and the second is to appear for her Madhyamik (Class X) board exams soon. Additional income comes from a small plot rented from a Santhal to grow paddy. A great boon is to be part of a self-help group with other women, who jointly run a fair price shop. Murshida wants to grow her business by making baskets too. As we leave, I spot a TV dish antenna peeping out over the thatched roof. Yes, there is power most evenings so they can watch TV, she acknowledges, a bit embarrassed at having to admit to this luxury. 

District headquarters Pakur, a mini town with filthy narrow overcrowded roads, is a world apart from the clear country air of Maheshpur. We walk down an alleyway to reach the verandah of Purnima Ghosh, whose big asset is a sewing machine. With it she has graduated in six years from a Rs 5,000 loan to a Rs 15,000 one. Now she wants to acquire a pico embroidery machine.

There is plenty of demand to cater to, testimony to the new prosperity in today’s urban India. Her two unmarried daughters help out. Her husband works in a stone-crushing outfit. Her son sells lottery tickets. They are passing through improving times and have bought a TV. But there is a dark cloud behind this upbeat scenario. Not long ago she lost Rs 10,000 when a Ponzi scheme collapsed. She has learnt her lesson. Now she has opened a savings account with the post office.

I seek out the deputy commissioner to get the total picture, and not just bear witness to success stories. But I am unable to keep my appointment since one of the tribal parties has laid siege to the office as part of an agitation against the concessionaires of the big coal mine in the district that has not lived by the promises made six years ago for tribal uplift.

I leave Pakur with some abiding impressions. The undulating countryside is beautiful wherever there is green cover. The district town must be one of the dirtiest in the country. And the only national brand at the weekly haat in Maheshpur is Fair and Lovely.

subirkroy@gmail.com