Micro worry

Lending to the poor seems a good idea, especially if the interest rate you charge is in the high double digits. Of course, you can force them to repay week after week. You don't have to bother about sending show cause notices, or about getting hauled to the courts. You can also raise money from the public to lend to the public, a case of cheap rupees lent to poor Indians and repaid in costly rupees. As long as the borrowers don't commit suicide, unable to repay their meagre loans, you are safe. The trouble begins when borrowers' inexpensive deaths end up getting widespread press, and the governments are forced to act. Of course, the counter argument is that these were not credit-linked suicides, that the state is cracking down to ensure its own pro-poor lending schemes succeed and that higher interest rates are justified to cater to a segment that nationalized banks themselves do not touch. The truth, as always, become the first casualty in all this obfuscation. The poor in India live on less than $ 2 or 1 a day, going by various yardsticks. Why would they need to borrow, when they know quite well they won't get increments or bonuses in the foreseeable future that will help repay the loans? There is fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, only that fortune is made on the graves of destitute Indians.