Author: Vivek Deshpande
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: March 25, 2008
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/287920.html
Introduction: One man's faith and SBI's help
enable Girata to wipe off debt, build up deposits
In the background, loudspeakers on a Shetkari
Sanghatana vehicle are at full blast, telling villagers how the Central Government's
"discriminatory" farm loan waiver leaves them out as it covers only
those having less than five acres. However, in this village of the country's
farmer suicide belt, they laugh it off.
They can afford to. In less than three years,
this 700-strong non-descript village has wiped out its entire debt and built
up deposits running into lakhs, thanks to one man's faith and a government
bank's decision to back it. In the process, it has also shown that banks can
help rural development without running up non-performing assets.
A fledgling milk business has ensured villagers
average bank deposits of Rs 50,000 per month, and next on agenda is a cattleshed,
a gober gas plant, a housing scheme, an irrigation scale-up plan and bettering
of education facilities for children. All the residents also have life insurance.
The change originated with Prakash Rathod, a young lecturer who holds a masters
in English Literature from Washim's Savitribai Phule Mahila Mahavidyalaya.
Belonging to the Banjara community, he was possessed with the desire to "repay
the village debt".
"I got so much from my village. For years,
I have seen its miserable condition. As a child I myself suffered a lot due
to poverty. So I thought I must do something for them," says Rathod.
Three years ago - by which time, Girata was
already blacklisted at State Bank of India's Shendurjana branch - he started
an awareness drive, telling villagers how they could come out of debt and
become credit-worthy. "I then took a delegation to the SBI branch and
persuaded the officials to reopen the villagers' accounts by offering to stand
guarantee," Rathod says. The bank's branch manager, Shekhar Natarajan,
agreed.
Rathod then started forming savings groups,
with more than 15 coming up in quick succession. Leading from the front was
Sant Sevalal Shetkari Bachat Gat. "We took loans two years ago to purchase
two buffaloes each and started multiplying them. Within a year, we had started
collecting about 250 litres of milk every day," says one of the members.
Other members too multiplied buffalo numbers
from 80 to 200. "Each one now nets Rs 2,700 per month," says Shravan
Rathod, who now has 18 buffaloes in his shed. The milk is sent every morning
to Washim, the district headquarters 40 km away.
The economics is simple. For one buffalo,
feeding expense amounts to Rs 26 per day. In return, it gives eight litres
of milk worth Rs 120. The net income is Rs 90 per day, that is, Rs 2,700 per
month. Of that, Rs 1,100 go towards loan repayment. So, they are left with
Rs 1,600 per buffalo per month. Even the dung doesn't go waste. "Manure
from it has helped us get better yield," says Sarpanch Madhukar Chavan.
Interestingly, in other villages in Vidarbha region, many desperate villagers
have been known to fake milch cattle purchases to avail of packages, while
others have sold off their animals for money.
Shravan says there is no need for such desperate
measures. "There's no reason why it should fail. One needs to put in
hard work," he says. Other savings groups purchased autorickshaws, some
started brick kilns, while one member purchased a tractor for commercial use.
"The women's self-help group took up
the job of providing mid-day meals to anganwadis," says Rathod. He admits
that some members were tempted to take the easy way out and bank on government
waivers to bail them out, but says he won them around when he told them to
compare their position with the others.
Incidentally, 50 per cent of the population
here is farm labourers. "We have no problems now," says Dilip Chavan,
one of the labourers. As the villagers kept up their end of the bargain and
got out of the debt trap, bank manager Natarajan quickly become a much-respected
figure in Girata. "We have now adopted it under the bank's Apna Gaon
scheme," he says.
SBI has also commercially benefited. "In
one year, the branch's credit exposure from the village went up from Rs 20
lakh to Rs 80 lakh. And 95 per cent of them have been regularly repaying their
debt," Natarajan says.
Under the housing scheme the bank is now financing,
150 pucca houses are being built in the next 1.5 years. Plus, the bank has
plans to finance irrigation and education plans for Girata's overall development
plank.
