Micro-finance
institutions (MFIs) were supposed to deliver a win-win solution: making
money, by doing a public good. But these two objectives turned out to
be irreconcilable. A reconciliation was possible only by applying force,
which MFIs actually applied, resorting to age-old, time-tested
‘third-degree’ methods. Soon, it acquired a proportion of a
socio-political ‘crisis’ in the main theatre of Indian micro-finance
industry, i.e., Andhra Pradesh (AP).
If one Googles ‘micro credit crisis’, the search engine throws up more
than 1.5 million pages within 0.42 seconds. But can one imagine writing
a novel based on it? That is exactly what Ramesh S Arunachalam, a known
name among development practitioners, an occasional writer for www.moneylife.in, has done.
Set against the backdrop of ‘Andhra Pradesh (AP) crisis’, that erupted
in 2010, the novel chronicles the events of a 13-month period, from
August 2010 to August 2011. Though the story unfolds in villages,
jungles, dusty roads and tea-stalls in two districts (Warangal and Ranga
Reddy), the reader is also taken to a stock exchange in Mumbai, chief
minister's office, secretariat, hotel rooms in Hyderabad, district
magistrate’s offices, police stations in district headquarters and
newspaper and investment bank offices in New York.
The author has consciously avoided using sector-specific jargon and
terms; but he has hardly left any important aspect of this sector
untouched. Though financial sector is at the centre of the novel, it
does not confine itself to the sector to explore the reasons for the
crisis; instead, it points to diverse reasons that flow from global
capital into MFIs, Centre-state coalition politics, money laundering,
political system and musclemen of the local political leaders and many
others.
Though the novel wears the usual disclaimer that “it is a fiction and
does not depict any particular individual/ MFI / Institution in India,
existing or past,” characters and events flash continuously in the minds
of the readers who have kept track of newspaper reports of events which
led to the crisis in AP. The book helps those readers in filling the
gaps, joining the dots and unveils the ‘material’ relationships among
the all the actors. It informs them why those actors must have behaved
in the way they did and no other way.
However, the book also assures us that it is not pitch dark, yet. Bob
and Chander in investigative journalism, Veena Mehra and Subba Rao in
administration, and even Renuka and Vijaya, the ordinary villagers, all
exhibited strength of conviction and stood by those poor borrowers who
have become a ‘prey’ of the ‘Angels’ who had promised “to take them out
from the hell of poverty.”
Arunachalam does deliver an ending to satisfy the reader. You cannot
forget the burning issues with an ending where the guilty is punished.
The reader gets a slap on his face in the last couple of chapters,
particularly the Epilogue, which declares that “The moneylenders are
back.” It informs that the investigative journalists and the
well-intentioned administrators, going out of their way, to book not
only the front men butchering the poor people, but even the most
resourceful and influential individuals who were actually running the
show, fail. The ‘Angels’ are rewarded by the State for ‘serving the
poor’ in the form of granting a banking licence. The novel provides the
deep insight into the real political economy that influences the
functioning of MFIs.
Talk of regulating MFIs started after the AP crisis; but our lawmakers
are busy with many businesses. The Micro Finance Bill, hanging fire for
past many years, is likely to hang where it is in the foreseeable
future. Even if passed, it is unlikely that the regulator will have the
institutional wherewithal to reach out to remote places in Warangal and
Ranga Reddy. The concerns of society will not be limited to wrongdoings
in ‘micro-credit’ activities alone. Because there are quite a few new
‘micro’ products, viz., micro-insurance, micro-pensions, micro-housing
loans, etc, waiting to target the poorer sections. The clientele of
these ‘micro-products’ is identical; the agencies that are going to
serve these products are being driven by identical business
considerations. They have a grip of identical levers of State machinery,
policy-makers and local political networks.
(New
York-May 2015) The inescapable truth of most every society is that the
lives of its citizens can often be told in terms of money, often with
negative consequences for the poor. Where Angels Prey is a work
of fiction by Ramesh S. Arunachalam that lays bare this unfortunate
truth and its dire consequences in rural India. Arunachalam weaves a
sometimes sordid tale chronicling the world of the micro finance
industry in Andhra Pradesh, India circa 2010.
