Editorial
Govt needs to streamline MFIs
WHILE it may not have consigned poverty to the museum yet, and looks highly unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future, micro-credit has brought positive changes in the lives of many in rural Bangladesh. There have been glittering success stories of people, especially women, bouncing back from the verge of absolute penury to reasonable solvency. However, as the cover story of the August 28 issue of New Age Xtra points out, there are also sad tales of people going completely broke just to make interest payments on the money they borrowed from one micro-finance institution or the other. Regrettably, these stories, which perhaps equal, if not outnumber, the tales of success hardly jolt the ruling quarters into substantive actions to protect the borrowers. The ruling quarters, it often seems, are completely overtaken by the myth surrounding micro-credit, a myth that makes micro-credit look like philanthropy, which it essentially is not.
Micro-credit is, after all, neither a godsend nor an economic elixir; it is business. Even the pioneer of micro-credit in Bangladesh, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Muhammad Yunus does not dispute that. And, just as in any other business, absence of an effective regulatory framework is likely to give rise to unbridled profiteering in the micro-credit sector, too. As the Xtra cover story indicates, profiteering may have crept in and many poor borrowers may be repaying their debts through their nose. Besides the allegations that many micro-finance institutions invest their profit in other businesses, the interest rate for micro-credit, which ranges 25 and 35 per cent, has always been the focus of criticism. While private banks have often complained that such an interest regime gives the micro-finance institutions an edge over them, there have been steady reports of Stories keep pouring in from different corners of the country, of borrowers sinking into a cycle of debt and taking micro-credit from one organisation to pay interest of loans taken previously from others. In their defence, the micro-finance institutions always point to the risk they take in disbursing credits without collaterals. Surely, it does not justify the inordinate interest that they exact from the poor borrowers.
Over the years, there have been talks in the corridors of power to streamline the micro-credit sector; however, such talks have hardly translated into decisive actions. While there is a Micro-credit Regulatory Authority, its efficiency and effectiveness have been questioned as far as protection of the interests of the poor borrowers is concerned. Importantly still, the interest rates charged by the micro-finance institutions remain inordinately high.
Hence, it is time that the government should bring the micro-credit sector under its scrutiny. It needs to initiate inquiries into allegations of many borrowers sinking into a perpetual cycle of debt and check their veracity. If found true – and there are reasons to believe that these will be – the government needs to initiate effective measures to first bring down the interest rates charged by the micro-finance institutions. Since the government itself is a major player in the micro-credit sector through the Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation, it can surely bring its weight to bear on the other players in the fray.
Racket in unsafe blood
While rackets of every variety keep flourishing in this country it is the illegal trade in human blood which is particularly repellent and potentially disastrous for the countless sick and helpless people. That unauthorised blood banks exist and are carrying on their illicit trade in the city without the mandatory technical competence and safeguards is no longer in the realm of popular suspicion or apprehension but is a proven fact. A raid by the Rapid Action Battalion on one such blood bank named Life Blood and Transfusion Centre in Jatrabari led to certain chilling disclosures. A photograph published in New Age on Friday showed members of RAB examining blood bags seized during the raid of the illegal blood bank. Obviously these blood bags could not be used without risk to the patents. Contaminated blood is the main vehicle for spread of AIDS and hepatitis. It is learnt that the so-called blood bank had been carrying on its nefarious operation for years without licence and technicians. The mobile court shut down the illegal blood bank and fined it Tk 4 lakh. Two employees have been arrested and the owner, as is usual in such cases, is untraced.
It is further revealed that this blood bank did not possess any facility for screening blood samples. It used to buy blood from drug addicts on the cheap (less than Tk 200 per bag) and supply the blood bags through brokers to hospitals and clinics at prices up to Tk 1,000. The drug addicts sold blood too frequently for money, without respecting the required interval of four months, thereby inviting health risk to themselves as well as to the recipients. As drug addicts commonly swap injection syringe, they are particularly vulnerable to AIDS and hepatitis. A few years ago a survey of mercenary blood donors was conducted which revealed that 29 per cent were infected with hepatitis and 98 per cent were addicts. Therefore, supplying blood to a hospital without screening it for the widely feared contagious diseases must be regarded as a grave crime.
Apprehension persists that there are more such illicit traders in blood. A few days ago the mobile court raided two blood banks in the city which were doing business without permission of the department of health. Permission here is not only a formality but supposedly a government assurance that safety standards have been met. Presence of brokers has created an entrenched interest in this vile operation. Brokers are a growing menace to the health service. Many of the clinics which are the bases of operation of the brokers are also run on mercenary considerations which together vitiate the health sector.
This raid reveals some yawning gaps in the country’s health service. On the one hand supply of blood is inadequate for the need and on the other voluntary donation is not popular. Hospitals and clinics do not give the patients and their attendants any guidance about obtaining safe blood. If the hospitals and clinics put up some notice on their premises guardians of patients would be alerted. Hospitals and doctors too have a responsibility to put an end to trade in infected blood.
Huge boulder in the pond
By one courageous act of having written a straightforward book on partition in which Jinnah is cast as a man of honour, Jaswant has thrown a huge boulder in the pond. The waves are affecting the Congress too, writes Saeed Naqvi
LORD Denis Healey, the best prime minister that Britain never had, told me a story some years ago which might be of interest now that the country is in a scrum re-evaluating Jinnah.
During a general election in the first quarter of the 20th century (Healey’s memory is hazy on the exact date), a short list of three Labour Party candidates from South Leeds contained a surprising name: MA Jinnah.
Healey peered through his bushy eyebrows and asked, ‘Don’t you think Indian history would have been different if Jinnah got the Labour ticket and won?’
Healey’s question is another one of those ‘what-might-have-been’ quantities in sub-continental history.
The hullabaloo that has followed publication of Jaswant Singh’s book is, quite honestly, because Jaswant happens to be a senior BJP leader who praised Jinnah.
As far as the Sangh Parivar is concerned any appraisal of Jinnah was a settled issue: our (Sangh) appraisal versus their (secularists) appraisal. What Jaswant’s book has done is to upset this ‘Us vs. Them’ status quo.
This kind of deviation was first attempted by LK Advani himself when, during a visit to Pakistan, he praised Jinnah’s August 11, 1947 address to the Constituent Assembly in Karachi in which Jinnah spoke with clarity of his vision of a secular Pakistan. The entire Sangh Parivar, led by the RSS, pounced upon Advani. Even Congress leaders did not spare him. This despite the fact that Advani returned with a huge sweetener to soften Hindu sentiment. This was a commitment by President Musharraf to restore the ancient Katasraj temple site. Temple or no temple, Advani must recant. Advani lost nerve and backed off.
Jaswant has not been asked to recant as Advani was. He has been summarily sacked. What were the reasons for Jaswant having been treated in this fashion?
The book was released on the eve of the BJP’s Chintan Baithak (brainstorming session) in Shimla. The session itself took place when the party was in terminal decline after the Lok Sabha debacle.
In any event the party was in no mood to allow Jaswant to cock-a-snook at the galaxy gathered in Shimla. Instead, someone had a brainwave: turn the tables on Jaswant and extract political mileage. Precipitate action against Jaswant (What Arun Shourie in another context calls ‘Jhatka’) would deflect attention from all the guilty men responsible for the party’s downhill acceleration. It would delay the ignominious departure of leaders who are so mesmerised by their own presence on the wobbly political stage that they have forgotten their exits.
Take precipitate action on what count? After all, even assuming that all those sunk in deep thought in Shimla do read books, how on earth do they claim to have read a 700-page tome overnight?
Was it media initiative or the publishers’ imaginative marketing strategy, that bits from Jaswant’s pre-launch interview to a channel were splashed across the front pages of newspapers the next morning? There was enough material here for the Chintan Baithak to go into convulsions about. The Sangh Parviar’s villain, Jinnah, had been cast as a hero; their hero, Sardar Patel, had been shown as being complicit in partition. But what really drove them to distraction was something else:
‘Woh baat saare fasaney Mein jiska zikr na tha Woh baat unko bahut Nagawar guzri hai!’ (The fact which was not even there in the narrative is precisely the one that has hurt them the most.)
For full fifty years the Sangh Parviar has persisted with its chant of ‘Muslim appeasement’. And here, one of their top leaders talks of Muslim pain, the Sachar Committee, the fact that the guilt of partition was heaped on Muslims when Hindus took a lead in the tragedy.
This reversal of 50 (fifty) years of assiduously sustained propaganda is what jolted those assembled in Shimla. When BJP leaders charged Jaswant of ‘denigrating’ the party’s ‘core’ ideology, this is the pain they were giving vent to. Jaswant is simply teasing the Parivar spokesmen when he asks with feigned innocence: ‘What is so core about Sardar Patel?’
‘Patel united the country,’ they scream in chorus.
‘But Patel seconded the resolution moved by the Jawaharlal Nehru for the country’s partition at the crucial Congress Working Committee meeting,’ retorts Jaswant.
It is conceivable that the Parivar has made an admission here: that Sardar Patel integrated the 600-odd princely states, including Hyderabad, into the Indian Union and it is on this count that they consider him the nation’s unifier. Ostrich like, they have simply buried their heads in the sand on Patel’s established complicity in partition.
Of course, there were petty reasons too for the party to expel Jaswant. Narendra Modi was quaking because the alleged criticism of Sardar Patel would affect his Patel votes in the coming by-elections in Gujarat. By way of bonus, some juice may well be extracted from the controversy in the Maharashtra elections.
By one courageous act of having written a straightforward book on partition in which Jinnah is cast as a man of honour, Jaswant has thrown a huge boulder in the pond. The waves are affecting the Congress too.
The Parivar has rushed to protect Sardar Patel. Does the Congress watch this appropriation of one of their icons by the RSS-BJP combine in silence? Or do they go out beating their breasts (as they appear to be doing in Gujarat) to the accompaniment of a chant: ‘Sardar Patel is ours! Sardar Patel is ours!’
In this public reacquisition of Sardar Patel, do they completely ignore Nehru? But if they bring Nehru into the discourse, what do they say?
That it was he who moved the partition resolution at the crucial CWC?
In his book, India Wins Freedom, Maulana Azad, Congress president from 1939 to 1946, blames Nehru and Patel squarely for partition. Jaswant quotes him.
In brief, Maulana Azad and Badshah Khan, two Muslim members of the CWC, are fiercely opposed to partition. Now Jaswant reinforces the uncomfortable reality that Jinnah, another Muslim, was pushed into a corner only by the Congress leaders.
Why is this reality so disturbing for most of us? It is disturbing because the basic perception that has sunk into the Hindu psyche over the past 62 years is that Muslims divided the country and also stayed on. It is just the sort of turf on which communalists pitch their tent.
Jaswant’s is a laudable effort. A pity he has not had access to Mushtaq Naqvi’s remarkable and much neglected book Partition: The Real Story. The following data from Mushtaq’s book would have strengthened his argument:
During the 1945-46 elections in UP, the total electorate was only 10.2% of the Province’s Muslims. Of these only 52% of the electorate voted. In other words, nearly 5% of the total electorate. The Muslim League won only 37.3% of the total electorate.
UP was the epicentre of the Muslim League activity. If the returns of UP are superimposed on the rest of the country we end up with the startling truth that only three out of hundred Muslims wanted Pakistan.
How then did partition happen?
Well done, Jaswant, for having opened up this debate. But who has the stamina or even the minimal interest to sustain the debate?
And now that Jaswant is all set to visit Pakistan with his book after Ramadan, let us await reactions there. Some will find Jaswant’s book heart-warming. But there are also those in the post Zia-ul Haq establishment who will find Jinnah’s lukewarm approach to Islamism an affront.
Saeed Naqvi is a distinguished fellow of the Observer Research Foundation and senior journalist
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