A BANKERS VILLAGE DIARY

By Moin Qazi

An award winning poet, Moin Qazi holds a doctorate and is an

independent researcher and consultant who has spent three decades in
rural finance with State Bank of India, India’s largest bank, where he was
involved in microfinance as a grassroots manager and as head of its
microfinance operations in Maharashtra. He belongs to the first batch of
managers of commercial banks who were associated with the launch of
India’s microfinance programme. He writes regularly on development
finance and environmental issues. He was a Visiting Fellow at the
University of Manchester specializing in microfinance

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When I decided to take up a rural assignment most of my friends thought I

was crazy. “You can’t possibly go and stay in a village for months and
years. It’s good as a tourist but certainly not as one who could spend life
in villages for years. You’ll certainly take to drinks, the toddy that is the
staple hospitality drink served by the villagers. You’ll quickly decay in an
atmosphere that combines the ugliest features of the city slums .When
broken in mind and body you will creep back to the city, looking and
behaving like a tropical tramp off a banana boat.” Rural India was being
seen as a dead weight on the Indian economy, a bastion of backwardness
embodied by the frequent suicides of farmers eking out livings from
sagging and arid fields, dependent upon fickle monsoons. Westerners had
begun to see India’s backwaters as killing meadows.

Most of us don't dream of beginning our careers in a village, so why blame

entrepreneurs? The very idea of an Indian village conjures up images of
tiny dusty hamlets, dry taps and oppressive heat and dust. Even for those
who don't mind it, there is the question of whether one can make 'serious
money' from rural markets.

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I had the most snobbish, exclusive education in a big city and qualified
for a lucrative job. “How is it possible that some people live in such
penury – and we go through the best of education but don’t give anything
back?” . It was this combination of a prickling conscience and anger that
drove me to seek a career in rural finance. It really didn’t involve too
much of a sacrifice. The bank for which I was working paid almost the
same salary for a posting in metro and a village. The only difference was
that the employers didn’t compensate for the discomfort and hardship
which a posting in a rural centre entailed. But even than the physical,
intellectual and emotional adventure that the assignment provided
appeared to be adequate compensation despite the monetary loss I
suffered. However this optimism was not shared by any of my colleagues
who felt that the management ought to compensate this sacrifice by way
of career rewards. I knew there were no rewards for working in villages. At
best you could lose out a few promotions and the management would be
least guilty about it. Also one had to suffer a bad image of being punished
by the management by being posted to God forsaken places as a rural
posting is rarely on grounds of efficiency ; it is more a weapon for
silencing you from regularly barking at the management .
I was going to an area where I was an outsider. I would never be able to
understand the area quite as well as a local person. But I also had a
special set of experiences and a critique of development processes born
out of varied experiences. I was born into a class which still remained
powerful and dominated decision making.

It was a mood of adventure and aspiration for serving the villagers that
inspired me as I took the bus for my first rural assignment. The bus had
disappeared around the bend, and all the villagers who had disembarked
with me had shuffled off to their homes. Night was falling, the cicada buzz
was rising, and I began to get that panicky feeling that the city-coddled
might experience upon finding themselves suddenly alone on the roadside
in a remote village. But my hosts were soon able to spot me and took me
to their humble dwelling where I spent the first night of my assignment.

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When I first started working in the field of development, I had the view
that the poor were ignorant and uneducated. I imagined I would help them
improve their lives. Most people admired my aspiration but asked me to
moderate my enthusiasm with several caveats. “You really can’t help the
poor. They know a lot more than we do. You can at best learn from them.
And possibly help them with financial aid. But remember, don’t try to
supplant their culture; that will be the greatest disservice.” I was puzzled
and initially wrote off this response as simply an attempt to unnerve me.
Later I realized that these youthful exchanges were not pure banter. I
volunteered to take up a rural assignment I started my work driven by
the notion that I was going to help the poor only to discover that noble
missions do not necessarily add up to great achievement.. I soon saw
what happened when the ‘educated’ tried to ‘help’ the poor—how
bureaucrats gave subsidized loans for high yielding jersey cows and how
these cows died in tough drought conditions, leaving the poor worse off.
How the veterinary doctors fleeced villagers charging them for their cattle
what top physicians and surgeons in cities also don’t dare to charge
affluent patients. How education failed to prepare poor children for getting
a job, yet alienated them from their traditional economies. When goals are
stymied by bureaucratic infighting even the best efforts accomplish little .I
put away my books and immersed myself in the rhythms of villages
learning from the poor. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by
the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It did
make me a little nervous and ashamed at my inadequacies. Yet it freed
me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. I was able to
understand the lives of villagers from their own perspective and design
programmes that worked. I think as manager of projects aimed at uplift of
the poor, one must cross the domain of an expert, transcend barriers of
narrow expertise and become social, economic and moral philosophers.
This is the best way we can help the poor villagers.

Apart from it being a mandatory posting, I had taken up a rural

assignment out of my own love for an engagement with work in villages. I

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had spent my entire career, including my days in school and college, in a
metropolis. I was professionally not suited for this work, but I was
convinced that I had the temperament that could make up for other
deficiencies.

Perhaps the hardest territory to colonize has been inside people's heads,
where superstition and stigma prevail. I began to view the village and its
environs more like a native than an outsider. Not only did I get used to
smells, dirt, dust, winds, noise, the insects and vermin and the lack of
privacy, I learned to distinguish good land from bad and the various
properties of the plants and trees commonly found in the area.

With every passing day at Bina, the seeds of such relationships were
taking root and sprouting .The canvas of the story was ready to stretch
wider, move further and include new friends like villagers from the
neighbouring village and a huge planet of development practitioners.

At first I was highly disappointed taking up an assignment in these remote

villages. I found the change - the slow pace of life, the stillness and
silence, the smokey fire, the stones in the rice and the domestic chores -
just as hard to adapt to as our Western visitors. It appeared to be a bitter
medicine, but I guess I needed it. I'm convinced that the only thing that
kept me going was that I loved what I did. It was an exhilarating and
enriching experience, something akin to a spiritual journey. One of the
earliest lessons that we learn in school is that ‘every work is noble.’ But
we never actually grasp its real meaning and live our days unhappy and
unproductive waiting for the noblest job to come. But that noble job never
arrives. When we realize that every work is noble and the worker,
irrespective of the type of work he does, is also noble then only we begin
to enjoy the thrill, challenge and satisfaction of work, then only we will
become noble people.

Living in the village was not a hardship to me and it was not a sense of self-sacrifice that kept
me there so long. The people, the countryside, the tranquility, the simplicity of the way of life
and the importance of our work made up for any lack of comfort or convenience. I felt

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privileged to have such an opportunity though on many occasions I felt inadequate in face of
the challenges that presented themselves. If I honestly consider how much we achieved it is
not a great deal and it is as much our failures that come to mind as our successes. The
villagers' world remains much the same. The roots of rural poverty can be traced
to the low per capita incomes that accrue to this section of our population.
As a result, most houses in villages are no more than four low-level mud
walls and a thatched roof over them. Drinking water is from a hand pump
or, occasionally, an overhead tank, but there are still a number of villages
where people have to trek a few kilometers to draw water from a well or a
lake. The open countryside is the toilet, so one dare not speak of
sewerage or drainage facilities. Many babies are still delivered at home,
not in a hospital. Many illnesses are still treated by quacks.
Their life consists of unremitting hard physical work, carrying heavy loads - be it water from
the well or stream, paddy from the fields or wood from the forest - and walking long
distances, all on a basic, unvarying and inadequate diet. And there is the ever-present threat
that things will get worse because of illness or death in the family, or because of storm or
drought or theft. Rural credit programmes were long notorious for being
subverted by the local rich, who had the collateral needed to secure loans
and the political clout required to default successfully on their loans.
The perception that the poor do not have skills or would not be able to
survive on their own is a myth. All you have to do is to provide them
access to capital and opportunity and see them take off. During all these
years of my association with the rural sector, I have come to know that
development is fuller when put in women’s hands, especially the poor,
who know best how to use the little money they have. Over the course of time I
came to understand that just as poverty did not simply signify the lack of material things, nor
could its cause be found in the people's ignorance. What the poor lacked was justice and the
power to control their own lives.

Contrary to the commonly held opinion that village India has given herself
up solely to religious meditation and philosophical speculation, it has
made many valuable contributions to practical arts, music, ship-building,
architecture, textile industries, etc. It must be kept in mind, however, that
India's industrialism of that period was the natural outcome of Indian

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character molded by her religious ideals and determined by her material
and regional resources. One of the discouraging features of Indian
democracy is the politicization of rural society. A decade back, villages
had a very remote link with political parties. Those who contested
panchayat elections were elected on the strength of their electoral merits,
irrespective of their ideological stripes. Cast did remain a wild card, but
the candidates’ character played a critical role. The growing tendency of
village groups to seek outside political support for solution to local
development issues has ruptured the traditional social structure. Each
leader in a village has a political master in the nearest town. All these
developments have made the village social structure highly complex and
confusing. In the coming years rural assignments for officials of
government and banks are going to become hazardous on account of the
growing criminalization of villages. The new roads and highways that
provide a fast passage not just to towns but also to metros have
demolished the concept of village republics.
This elite has found ingenious methods of evading ceiling laws and
tinkering land records. The patronage of the powerful is the dominant
feature of public life. It is this daily experience that explains why the poor
lack confidence in any government sponsored institutions. The biggest
threat that a development worker faces in a village is from this elite. In
rural India, political clout depends heavily on caste dominance. The caste
system is well entrenched in villages and permeates every part of life. The
dominance of the higher castes over the lower ones is overpowering. The
upper castes enjoy wealth and power in some form or other—as
landowners, as traders, or in the form of education. Needless to say, the
lower castes comprising the large number of landless labourers, weavers,
potters, leather workers, and other crafts people are economically weak.
Besides the caste hierarchy, a few families who own productive land and
assets like water enjoy enhanced power in a village. The rest of the
families depend on them for their livelihood—working their lands, helping
at harvest time, performing all kinds of agricultural and even domestic
chores. In adverse times, the poor borrow from the landlords, pledging

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their silver, their small piece of land, and sometimes even their children.
The position of being both employer and moneylender is one of great
power, affording ample opportunities for exploitation .

Rural development takes place in a much more stringent environment.

Unlike in private business, those who undertake the work have no
personal stake. The infrastructure is underdeveloped and problems for a
rural development worker include the lack of safe drinking water, poor
health and schooling facilities, and so on.

Management, no doubt, requires competence, and higher levels of this

attribute are obviously needed to tackle complex projects. Development
in underdeveloped rural areas is far more difficult that doing business in
big cities. But when it comes to deployment of trained and efficient
manpower rural areas get the least priority.

During my career as a development journalist I always travelled with a

camera. Photo journalism was a specialized field by itself and I had
developed enough expertise to get by lines as credits for my pictures. My
skills as a photographer strengthened my standing as a journalist. It was a
major contributor to my success as a travel writer. During my rural
assignment this skill further helped me ingratiate myself to the villagers.

One of the basic requirements of a bank account is a photograph.

Every individual was required to submit three copies of his photographs
for opening a bank account. I found this requirement the biggest
bottleneck for villagers, particularly women. A person had to travel at
least ten km to visit a studio in the town to get himself photographed.
Apart from the travel costs and the expenses on photographs at the
studio, an additional expenditure had to be incurred for the person who
was required to travel to collect the photo prints after three days. That
was the time it took for processing and printing of the photo rolls. The
worse plight was of dairy farmers. When an animal died, a photographer
had to be contacted. The insurance company required a close up photo of
the dead animal in a pose that would display the insurance tag latched to

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the earlobe. The photographers would literally fleece the poor villagers. At
times, the borrower would surrender his claim if he was not in a position
shell out the required amount. Our camera relieved our customers of
many of these problems. Colour photography had just been introduced,
and it was a great novelty. In those days colour photo rolls were sent to
Mumbai for printing. A lab had recently opened at Nagpur and it was
offering substantial inaugural discount to attract customers. The printing
process had a technique that produced four passport size prints on a
single postcard sized paper. The cost was therefore kept to the barest
minimum. We retained three copies for the banks use and returned the
extra copy as a complimentary memento to the customer. My staff would
also visit the farms to photograph dead animals for insurance claims; this
token service won us lot of laurels. The Bank already had a provision in its
operations manual for reimbursement of expenses of such photographs.
We used this provision to purchase photo rolls and defray the expenses of
the processing lab. Since we were regular client providing both business
and publicity to lab ,the lab gave us one complimentary roll with one time
free print of the entire roll as part of a new promotion campaign. We
screened close up portraits of 35 poorest households in the village. They
were photographed in the backdrop of their mud hovels and cattle. We
gave these printouts mounted in attractive frames donated by the lab as
a gift on Independence Day. This grainy memento still adorns the houses
of many families renewing their memories of their association with the
bank.

Improving rural women’s economic status and helping them build an asset
base contribute to breaking down gender stereotypes. Eliminating the
barriers that prevent women from getting access to fundamental assets is
crucial for broad-based economic growth and poverty reduction. When
you connect with a purpose greater than yourself you are fearless; you
think big. Its chief premise is that grass-roots initiatives are the ultimate
drivers of prosperity: Small entrepreneurs create wealth, and together,
they can do more to end poverty than all the top-down welfare programs
combined.

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The years that I spent in the hinterland were absolutely magical, simply
because I was able to actually work with people at the lowest rung of the
economic ladder, rather than merely ‘dealing’ with them as statistics on a
file .This had fine-tuned my understanding of social and economic
realities. Traveling by motor bike to villages in the most remote of areas,
interacting with people of cultures that seemed to exist on a different
plane.It was no small hardship given India's chaotic and treacherous
bovine trails that double up as roads. My accessories were a small
suitcase cinched together with baling twine and a bulging burlap sack
whose contents were as jumbled as the pieces of my own disorganized
everyday life. I worked hard to acquaint myself with poor, rural India by
making numerous visits to remote, neglected villages, where I spend
hours listening to villagers, sometimes sleeping in their huts while or
sitting cross-legged on their dirt floors, sharing their meals. My gentle and
unflappable manners helped me ingratiate myself to these strangers who
reciprocated generously. Though kindness is quick, acceptance comes
slowly. One long-time native summed it up: “You’re only a stranger for
five minutes, but you’re a newcomer for 50 years.”

It was surreal. It was during this time that I realized the true challenge of
development. A challenge that no matter how much aid money, or how
much external assistance is provided, change will only occur when the
motivation for development comes from the villagers themselves. It is an
issue of empowerment. This is the root of sustainable development.
Grassroots initiatives are the ultimate drivers of prosperity. Small
entrepreneurs create wealth, and together, they can do more to end
poverty than all the top-down welfare programs combined. What is
needed most of all is moral leadership willing to build solutions from the
perspectives of poor people themselves, rather than imposing grand
theories and plans from above I have seen from close range that money
is not the main factor, it is effective programs and people to put these
programs together, who could slowly eliminate poverty .Tackling poverty
requires a fundamentally different approach: one that starts with people
themselves and encourages the initiative, creativity and drive from below

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that must be at the core of any transformation of their lives if it is to be
lasting. I've learned that people usually tell you the truth if you listen hard
enough. If you don't, you'll hear what they think you want to hear. I had
the privilege of watching the women acquire a sense of dignity once they
were given tools for self-sufficiency. I discovered the power of creating a
business with real accountability. And I learned, maybe most important, to
listen with my heart and not just my head. It has been an exhilarating
experience and a personally humbling one. Are poor clients last in the
long list of our objectives? How do we bring poor clients first in the list of
priorities? Are we asking the right questions to our clients and looking for
real answers?

There are critics who believe the poor are so poor, why you would make
them pay for things. My experience is that dignity is more important than
anything else and that the poor already pay for things so let’s find a way
to provide them things they can afford and want. That ethos underpins
microfinance. The mantra is: “Tell us what the poor want, don’t tell us
what you think is good for them.”There’s arrogance to the attitude that
we’re going to come in and fix something for you, and you should
appreciate it. The only way to really build trust is by starting from how
people really are.

There will always be distress and sometimes turning to the government

will be unavoidable. But it is vital to prevent the state from becoming so
beneficent that it undermines people's will to help themselves. It is vital,
too, to remember that, while state intervention can bring short-term
benefits, it invariably comes at a cost, sometimes hidden at first but
usually enormous in the long term. That is the great lesson of our century
and it has been learned the hard way .There are still vested interests
which continue to cling like barnacles to the ship of the state.
Poor households around the world have demonstrated their ability to use
and pay for financial services through longstanding informal agreements
such as savings clubs, rotating savings and credit associations, and

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mutual insurance societies. In India, there are numerous ways in which
the poor can access credit through informal and semi-formal institutions.

I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope.
There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on the
one hand, or preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we
must all strengthen in ourselves is that of human empathy. Empathy will
provide the most hope of all--and the foundation for our collective
survival. An open system means more voices, more voices mean more
discussion which leads to better decision. It may mean hundreds of
voices, with different thoughts and priorities, constantly fighting for one
man’s ear, but then are always ways of devising a mechanism appropriate
to one’s situation.

The reality as experienced by the poor living on the margin of existence

is often different from the assumptions made by the administrator. It is
difficult for us to understand the fears, the hesitancy, the pain and the
labour with which the poor live and which therefore, separates the project
from its implementation, from what is possible and impossible, or what is
easy or difficult for the rural poor.

Rural poverty is unperceived or misperceived because of the ‘distance’ of

the administrator and the professional from the rural poor. As Robert
Chambers has pointed out, the rich, the powerful and the urban based
professionals are at the core, the poor, the weak and the rural people are
at the peripheries leading to a systematic bias in terms of rural poverty
unperceived or misperceived. There is the phenomenon of rural
development tourism, i.e. the phenomenon of brief visits more as a rural
tourist, the roadsides and tarmac visits, the meeting with the more
influential people in rural areas, asking the predetermined questions etc.
car convoys with hundreds of hangers-on. The aid structure often involves
top-down decisions, incredible bureaucracy and paperwork, and the
dispatch of expensive American expatriates who have to drive around in
SUV’s. Where possible I think it’s much better to support local groups
rather than those expats. The locals cost much less than foreigners and

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they usually have a much better idea of what people need. Unless the
poor and disadvantaged are deliberately and persistently sought, they
tend to remain in the background ,effectively screened from outside
inquiries.

The problem with the villages in Central India where I spent a major part
of my career in rural banking was that the people were known for their
following instinct; they followed each other. There was not one leader in
the bunch; there were scores of them. They followed each other into
oblivion. The womenfolk would normally huddle behind curtains, giggling
shyly at us, content to fade into the background, letting their husbands
speak for them or they would blink a coded language to fellow women
with their eyelids. I saw my role as that of the initiator. I was a ‘catalyst’,
the ‘agent for change’, the one who ‘intervened for change’. In other
words, the perception was that of myself as the leader, in so much as the
action that followed was ultimately traced back to a set of actions for
which I was responsible. It may have been an idea or a set of ideas.
Gradually, I began to understand that the perceptions and ideas exist in
different forms in people’s minds already. What is really needed is the
time and space and opportunity for putting them into action. My role was
now severely limited in my mind. All around me, I saw development
programmes failing because they did not take the politics of the ground
reality into account. An effort for deep-rooted social change would have to
derive its strength from the people it intended to benefit. . I worked in
rural projects for close to three decades, and throughout this time was
disappointed by the way government, banks and development agencies
approached rural development. Their traditional approach failed to build
the capacity of the people. They undertook projects that kept funds
flowing, but failed to consult the affected villages. The projects weren't
collaborations with the people and the result was a lack of sustainability.
Most importantly, the people were not empowered and valued enough to
learn and think for themselves in finding solutions. Instead, they were
simply instructed and subsequently followed direction like servants.
Tackling poverty requires a fundamentally different approach: one that

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starts with people themselves and encourages the initiative, creativity and
drive from below that must be at the core of any transformation of their
lives if it is to be lasting .If people can be given the support they need to
make important decisions in their own communities, to build their own
democracies in their own ways, they can do the rest themselves. In doing
so, they will not only move their own communities out of poverty, they will
take the world with them. Change must come from within: communities
must make their own decisions regarding their future. We have to
promote participatory approaches that address the specific needs of each
community, as well as increased education. Though recognizing that the
escape from poverty is a slow and arduous process, it is one of
empowerment. Those determined to improve their lives will seize
opportunities to improve their lives – we therefore, should take on a
supporting role in the development process rather than try to provide all
the answers.

The “bottom up” approach is about living and working with the poor,
listening to them with humility to gain their confidence and trust. It cannot
be bought and manipulated with money, or by grafting urban assumptions
of development which in fact may destroy existing workable low cost
structures. It is about respecting and implementing the ideas of the poor,
encouraging them to use their skills and knowledge for their own
development. It is about taking a back seat and providing the space for
them to develop themselves. In short, we need to nurture and nourish
financial democracy. There may be an ideological debate over whether
popular participation is a good in itself (representing the goal of
empowerment of the poor and, in the larger political sense, the goal of
democracy) or a means to an end – project sustainability. The poor are
often inconspicuous, inarticulate and unorganized. Their voices may not
be heard at public meetings in communities where it is customary for only
the big men to put their views. It is rare to find a body or institution that
adequately represents the poor in a certain community or area. Outsiders
and government officials invariably find it more profitable and congenial
to converse with local influentials than with the uncommunicative poor.

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In a small project everyone can participate in decision-making. That's the
only real way to improve a community. The community gets employment
and has a feeling of ownership and control. But the practical advantages
of participation for project effectiveness and sustainability weigh heavily
in favor: participation can refuse waste of project resources and lead to
recurrent cost recovery; most important, it gives people a stake in the
project resources and thus makes them willing to support it. There are
also the negatives of participation: it is difficult, time-consuming, and
tricky; it can permit elites or free riders to get more than their share; it
can stir up conflicts that traditionally society and culture have been able
to keep under wraps; it can alienate governments; and so on. We can
always have a basket of recipes to suit every group from which to choose
an appropriate one. The success will finally depend on the charisma and
the personal commitment of the project leader who inspires the team and
lets the creative aquifers charge back to life.

Financial development through public participation enables individuals to

make the most of their potential and represents a tool for expanding
financial democracy. We have made historic strides toward the
consolidation of political democracy, revolutionizing governance in India's
rural hinterland but they have not been accompanied by the
democratization of means and opportunities. Financial democracy is
fundamental for achieving greater inclusiveness, improving social
cohesion, and generating broad-based growth. It is therefore crucial for
economic dynamism and political stability. It is crucial because the lack of
financial democracy prevents people from gaining access to resources
that would enable them to make the most of!

Empowerment means different things to different people. There is, of

course, one tide that will lift all boats. That is the tide of economic growth.
Poverty is the biggest hurdle to empowerment. It is poverty that denies
access to education; fails to create adequate number of job opportunities;
drives families to a demeaning life shorn of the barest dignity; forces a
mother to give away her girl child in marriage. It is a matter of common

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knowledge that higher family income results in greater spending on
education for the children; better food and clothing; search for better
housing; more forceful assertion of rights and the willingness to seek legal
remedies; and the capacity to influence, individually or collectively,
decisions that affect large sections of the people.

The heroic stories of tenacious women scripting tales of economic success

are great signs of a brighter tomorrow .For a world where people live on
less than a dollar a day this is an important step. The journey of a
thousand miles starts with a step. Truly, there is change in the air. Though
not dramatic, not a headline grabber, it is a slow and quiet transformation
that definitely is underway in remote and far-flung villages. Women who
so far had been diffident and withdrawn are gradually shedding their
earlier reticence and stepping out of the four walls of their homes to
acquire an identity of their own. It is a silent effort in the country that is
bound to accelerate progress on any indicator—economic, social, or
political—the last fairly visible with most of the one million women elected
over the years at the panchayat level coming out of the self-help groups.

This may not be a revolution- but at least it is a start.

Samiullah Khan Marg Sadar,

Nagpur 440 001India
Phone: +91 – 712 – 2533006
Cell: 9049638959
E-mail: moinqazi123@gmail.com

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