Cultivating Tents and SHG-Killer Marawadis

Yesterday, the CDC project manager took me to Adarsha Labourer's Camp.
I was sure that I had seen the worst of it. Tin-shed houses, no
sewage, no source of potable water. The people were migrants from
North Karnatka, all of whom had moved here and bore life in these
squalid conditions in an attempt to live a better life and to give
their children a shot at a decent future.
Today, I saw worse. Much worse.
On one side, there are apartments where, I presume, higher middle
class families stay. On another side, there are duplexes. These are
far more luxurious, I was told. On yet another side, there are
smaller, one-storied houses. They are about the same size as those I
saw in Neallurahalli, the slum, but they have water connections and
they look a lot better. In the midst of all this, literally in the
center, is a mid-size field of tents. I cannot describe how incredibly
queer it looks. The video I got of it should be able to assist me in
describing this to you but that will have to wait.
I got to go into a couple of them. No rooms (obviously). The one
living area serves as a kitchen, bedroom, store room (for the family's
few yet very precious possessions) and drawing room. When nature
calls, well, they go to nature (or what's left of it) and do it on the
side of the road. I looked around for a source of water that they
could possibly use for bathing but I found none. I'll have to leave to
your imagination as to how they keep themselves clean. Oh and around
5-6 people live in one of these tents.
The field that these tents are on are owned by the same man that owns
the luxury duplexes. He rents out enough land to build a tent for five
hundred rupees every month. The cost of building the tent is borne by
the inhabitants (most of whom are Telegu and work menial government
jobs like cleaning sewers, etc). The field is actually land meant for
cultivation. I presume, therefore, that it is land that cannot be
legally built on. So the man that owns it figured that he'd just rent
it out to the poor and, consequently, earn much more then he would if
he used it as farmland. Between the compassion I felt for the people
that live here and the anger I felt at the injustice of it all, I
found it amusing that this land, meant for farming, was dotted with
small, blue-tarp-covered tents, almost as if the owner of the land had
planted tents instead of, say, paddy or cashew or something else.
I'm a little torn between what I should think of this man. Is he
exploiting them? Or is he helping them? Should he giving it for free?
What would all these people do if such an arrangement wasn't
available?

The place I work with, NCM-India, is a big-believer in Self Help
Groups (SHGs) and almost every single one of their projects has at
least one in operation. SHGs are basically women's associations that
assist women in generating income, saving that money and cooperating
to provide each other bulk sums of money at low interest when the need
arises. It's been only two days here in Neallurahalli and I have to
tell you that I totally get why my boss and his wife harp on SHGs so
much. They're a beautiful concept.
The beauty of it is that it extends so much beyond saving and loans
and all that. An SHG is a place where women come together and solve
their own problems. It's a place that encourages cooperation and
creates a sense of unity among community-members. I may be stretching
this too much but I've imagined how conflicts between families could
be resolved or at least mitigated by the fact that women in both
households are part of the same SHG. SHGs collectivize financial
responsibility, yes, but they also collectivize hope. You can quote me
on that. =P
I was told today by the very knowledgeable project manager of
Neallurahalli (who, by the way, has set up 25 SHGs in the last 5
years!) that there's a serious threat to the existence of SHGs on the
horizon - Marawadis. I know! They're here too!
The entire purpose of an SHG is to steer people away from debt. Hence,
the loans are low-interest (and by low-interest I mean almost no
interest). And the profit that the SHG makes through interest charged
is distributed among SHG members itself. SHGs have no single
proprietor - everyone owns it. The problem, however, is that SHGs are
financially miniscule. Depending on the SHG, the monthly savings
amount ranges from 15 rupees to a hundred. Some of most successful
SHGs have annual savings of only about one lakh. And that's a huge sum
of money for a group of 8-10 women but it's still miniscule compared
to the money available in banks. As a result, they don't have the
financial capacity to service 'heavy' loans (loans of 15 thousand and
above). Marawadis, ever looking for an opportunity to make money, saw
an incredible business opportunity here.
What they do is they hire local women as fronts. Whenever a member of
the community has a financial need (or, in most cases, want) that an
SHG cannot service, these women swoop in and offer what on the onset
looks like a interest free loan. If you want a loan of twenty
thousand, they'll ask you to put up an 'initial payment' of three
thousand rupees. Over the course of year or two you pay back twenty
thousand rupees. Although there's no talk of interest, a woman that
takes a loan from such a lender ends up paying 15%! I can't say for
sure how many women fall into debt as a result of turning to a
Marawadi-backed lender but I'm assuming it's commonplace. That's more
interest than a bank loan! It's just packaged differently.
It might seem like a stupid idea but it's stealing many women away
from SHGs. Greed may have a role to play in this but I also understand
that cost of living is constantly rising and women might actually need
heavier loans to service genuine and urgent needs. The problem isn't
just the high interest rates. It's also the fact that women are being
drawn away from institutions that build character and that weave
themselves into the community.
A possible solution is to pump money into SHGs. Fund them and enable
them to be able to service heavier loans within the framework of
trust, responsibility and sense of community that exists already. The
government already funds projects within SHGs. That could be expanded.
Perhaps an initiative on the part of urban privileged such as
ourselves? Just a thought.

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