Farmer suicides have become an order of the day in our country. Every now and then, driven by the extreme poverty and inability to payback even the low rate of interest loans, farmers in many parts of the county are finding suicide as the only viable way to end their misery and sufferings. Famer suicides further worsen the situation as the families they leave behind generally have no one to take care which eventually increases more cases of suicides. A report by P. V. Deshmukh states that farmer suicide was quite high between 1997 and 2005 and one farmer commits suicide every 53 minutes in India.
Keeping in view this grave issue of concern, Sahulat Microfinance Society on May 8 organised a National Consultation on “Interest-free Microfinance Through Co-operatives: Challenges and Opportunities.” The keynote address was given by Prof. M. S. Swaminathan, a renowned figure and Father of Green Revolution in India. He expressed his concern for the issue and said the country is looking for a viable solution to end this menace and come with the schemes where the poor would have easy credits at access.
Prof. Swaminathan further expressed his concerns regarding the plight of women farmers as banks are reluctant in lending money to women because of the unavailability of documents required by the banks in order to release loans. He pressed for the need of Interest-free Microfinance but with sustainability.
He even criticised the mechanism of the government as he made the statement that the government allots a huge sum of money for the agriculture sector, but the tragedy is that this money does not reach the poor as the middle men eat up the funds in half way. He even mentioned Mohd. Yunus of Bangladesh and used Yunus’s words to criticise banks and said, “Banks do not consider the poor as credit worthy and banks are not people worthy.”
He highlighted the aspect of compassion in Islam and said Interest-free loans as Islam promulgates is on the grounds of compassion which is the cornerstone of Islam. He showed his inclination towards the interest-free microfinance; however his only concern was sustainability. Credit is linked to market and unless we devise mechanism for returns, the system will not work, and would turn out to be mere philanthropy, he said. Present mechanism and approaches to deal with the issue are not working and there are a total of 35 districts in the country which have turned into “agrarian hotspots.”
He further said that the present policies of the government are not farmer-friendly and there should be a route of compassion which should be looked out and followed for the betterment of the plight of the poor farmers. He concluded his talk with the statement, “The new methods and policies should not just be a business model, but it must have a feeling for the poor and the marginalised.”
The Chief Guest at the function was Dr. Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, Member of Planning Commission, Government of India. She praised the efforts of Sahulat Microfinance Society and lauded the name Sahulat, which means ease. She said it is very difficult to think about the situation out of the box but Sahulat, by introducing the concept of interest-free microfinance, has really come up with the out-of-the-box solution which is commendable. She drew the attention of the people regarding health issues and said besides agriculture and farming, health is one of the potent factors which bring people under debt and in order to repay the debts incurred they are forced to sell their lands, livestock and even children and body organs. She vouched for interest-free microfinance and asked for more inputs from the experts to make the piloting feasible.
Mr. J.N.L. Srivastava, Retd. IAS and Ex-Secretary (Agriculture), however had certain reservations for the plan. He expressed apprehensions that the scheme would be misused by the people and gave examples where people who were given low rate of interest loans, lent it again to others on higher rate of interests. He further said it has been seen in many cases that the programmes ran well in the pilot phase, however in the full scale implementation, programmes failed to the expectations.
There were a few other people who seconded his thoughts and placed more or less similar arguments, however there was a major group of academics and intellectuals who expressed high hopes from the initiative. Dr. Chan Ho Choi, Regional Director, International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), Asia Pacific, said, “Managing cooperatives is not a difficult task and the programme will definitely be a success.”
In the beginning, a brief introduction of Sahulat Microfinance Society was given by Dr. Ausaf Ahmad, Board Member, Sahulat Microfinance Society. The society was established in 2010 and its main function is to facilitate organising and developing institutions, more particularly in co-operative sector, at grassroots level with the aim to provide interest-free microfinance for socially, economically and educationally marginalised sections of the society in order to minimise the socio-economic disparities.
The programme concluded with the vote of thanks by Mr H Abdur Raqeeb, General Secretary of Indian Centre of Islamic Finance who is also the board member of Sahulat Microfinance Society.
The other dignitaries present for the panel discussion were, Dr. B. K. Sahu (Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade), Dr. Chitra Kasana (Vice Dean of Student Affairs, Sybiosis International University), Mr. G.K. Gangopadhyay (Chief Director, National Cooperative Development Cooperation), Dr. Navin Anand (Resource Person and Moderator, UNDP), Ms. Punam (Freelance Consultant – Community Bases Organisations and Microfinance), Dr. Sumati Verma (Assistant Professor, Delhi School of Economics) and Dr. Veena Nabar (Former Chief Economist, National Cooperative Development Cooperation).