A Big Write Off

Thanegaon, Maharashtra: Missed the waiver bus

Posted by Mehak Kasbekar at 
This farmer wishes he had taken a loan. He fulfills every other criteria he says. 60-year-old Bharat Rao Revatkar has a meager two acre plot along the national highway 8 that connects Nagpur to Amravati in Vidarbha . The Rs 5,000-Rs 7,000 that he makes every four months is not enough to meet his daily expenses of food and farming inputs so he takes...

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Waiver divides a house

Posted by Mehak Kasbekar at 
Amravati : No research report will mention this negative impact of the farm loan waiver scheme. The central government has definitely divided this household. Baba Kothiram Bange and Ramchandra Kothiram Bange, two brothers in Thanegaon in Vidarbha, are not on talking terms these past few weeks. First they had to break their 16 acre plot into four halves...

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Bharatpur, Rajasthan: The spoon-fed lot

Posted by Sangeeta Singh at 
Bankers in Rajasthan seem to be perpetually confused about the implementation of the loan waiver package. First, they were at their wits end over where to display the list of names of the farmers who have qualified for the waiver and relief schemes--inside the bank or on the outside wall. “We didn’t want to take chances because for every small detail...

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Mandya, Karnataka: Simple and extravagant

Posted by Ajay Sukumaran at 
Sometime ago, when women's wing leaders in Mandya such as Sunanda Jayaram saw that farmers' families were willing to spend less on marriage ceremonies, it meant that their awareness programmes had borne fruit. For, even when he could hardly make ends meet, the farmer used to celebrate events in as grand a way as he had when the crop prices were...

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Datia, MP: The age of computers

Posted by Sanjiv Shankaran at 
In casual conversations, senior public-sector bankers seldom fail to mention the progress made by their banks in computerizing far-flung branches. The statistics, while impressive, do not give an inkling of the tortuous progress of computerization in the banking system.Early last week, even as reports trickled in of finance ministry officials sending...

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Bayana, Rajasthan: Loss of face

Posted by Sangeeta Singh at 
A bank manager at Bayana in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur says the waiver has rendered useless all his efforts to get defaulters to pay up. Before the government announced its loan waiver package, he used to display the names and photographs of farmers whose payments were due on a board at his branch. “I did it to put pressure on defaulters. Also, it was to...

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Robertsganj, UP: Great Expectations

Posted by Maitreyee Handique at 
Unlike many non-descript small town banks that go to sleep in the afternoon, the State Bank of India office in Robertsganj , the headquarters of Sonbhadra district in Uttar Pradesh, is buzzing with a quiet officious air. Customers patiently wait for their turn in front of the cash counter. And in a corner of the main hall, half-a-dozen farmers crowd...

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Bharatpur, Rajasthan: No smoking please, we’re bankers

Posted by Sangeeta Singh at 
When the branch manager of a rural bank in the Bayana tehsil in Bharatpur district of Rajasthan organised a meeting of the "kisaan club", a local group, to bring bankers and farmers together to discuss issues related to agriculture, most people who landed up showed little respect for the bankers. "I had called senior officials from banks...

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Bundelkhand, MP: Damn it will, dam it won't

Posted by Padmaparna Ghosh at 
Photograph by Harikrishna Katragadda The wall stretches out into the horizon. It used to be a dam (Sukwa-Dukwa Dam), when the river still ran. The river, which now is an apology for one, makes the dam look quite silly and sudden. The reservoir is dry with cattle lounging in a scum pond, which once would be a lake many feet deep. Shiv Mangal, a local...

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Datia, MP: Marriage problem? Blame the loan waiver

Posted by Sanjiv Shankaran at 
This was one story that seemed implausible. Datia, in Madhya Pradesh's Bundelkhand area , ought to have been happy with the loan waiver following a few years of scanty rainfall. The official in the bank branch in Datia town put up a stirring defence of the waiver. "What about the those industrialists who get away with defaults,?" he asked...

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Bundelkhand, UP: No rain but a little hope - Following the debt waiver across the country

Posted by Padmaparna Ghosh at 
Bundelkhand was never going to be a happy story. Drought ridden for five years. Known for starvation deaths and brawls over water tankers. No matter how you looked at it, it wasn’t going to be pretty. But there are stories of hope and hints of change. Among the stories of scarcities and suicides, this is one that stands out. (Person's name not used...

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