Negative Area, Muslim, Ghoragacha and Mumbra
Posted by soumiksdiary on December 1, 2007
I was going through the mails of Members of Solution Exchange Forum and suddenly came across a mail by Dr. Arabinda Mitra. I remember that he was my teacher in Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya (B.C.K.V) where I did my Graduation in Agriculture. Sir is from Department of Agril. Economics. I was curious to see that Sir has been associated with SHGs Movement in a remote village called “Ghoragacha” which was close to B.C.K.V. So I decided to write a mail to Sir and asked about the details. Sir was kind enough to reply me back the very next day and after going through his mail, I was surprised and excited too.
I am reproducing below Sir’s mail
“I shall write in brief here about the Self Help Groups of Ghoragacha. We started an informal school at Ghoragacha, a nearby village to Bidhan Chandra Krishi Vidyalaya, Mohanpur, Nadia, West Benagl to educate the farmers about practices of agriculture. The school was funded and supported by UPL Company. This was the first kind of school in India. Later this model has been replicated by state government, central government and others. This type of school was set up in many states. I was associated with the school from the very beginning. The philosophy of such school and mode of operation was mooted in the department of agricultural Economics. In fact I was heading the department that time. We included Farm management and cost aspects in the curriculum of the school.
One day I was listening to the lecture delivered by Dr.H.Sen (Agronomy). He was telling about OL (elephant foot.). I was astonished to see high return from OL. At the end of lecture I asked about 60 learners whether they are prepared to grow ol in the coming season. Only two hands were raised. Upon questioning I came to know that to harvest one bigha of ol- it requires at least Rs.20,000 /,which these people can not bear. Then I asked for financial support from banks or other sources. I found that this particular village is blacklisted. UBI (Jaguli) branch or the Co-operatives are not willing to give loan to them. It is very difficult to take loan from local money lenders. They charge more than 50% per annum. The farmers were really poor. Their source of income was only from land. The positive thing was that they are most efficient farmers in the region.
I asked them I am sorry that today are not in apposition to cultivate ol. But in the coming years you can grow more valuable crops, if you are united and stand by yourself with out depending upon external source. They agreed. I stared with the lessons of forming SHGs. Ultimately they did. More than 30 Shgs are in operation in this village. Women have formed SHGs. It was also my challenge as because this village is 100% dominated by Muslims.
Today I am proud that they are cultivating the most valuable crops ,viz, Guava. This has become the second Baruipur. People are happy. With development of SHGs there have been tremendous social and economic changes. Banks are now coming to lend money. Upon evaluation they told me that money lenders are not seen in the areas. Now, they put the question” Sir, what we will do with money. We have money and now need other things to be done by us”. Those SHGs are not dependent on any external organizations. They have built up themselves. They are running in their own ways. I was with them for constant two years. Then I left to see whether they can do themselves or not. The thing is that they can. Results of Shgs at Ghoragacha have been visited by many scholars”
Sir’s mail reminds me about the place “Mumbra”, a sub urban town in outer Mumbai. It is also considered as Negative Area and thats why No Bank gives loan to people of Mumbra. The interest rate was as high as 10% per month. Ironically both Ghoragacha and Mumbra are dominated by Muslim People. Then I searched internet and came to know many Muslim areas are considered as Negative Area and if one area has been tagged as Negative area, then nobody really takes the pain to look into whether it is right to continue the trend or not years after years. I could not figure out the reason.
Do Muslim are so risky for lending? Is there anything to do with their religion with lending money?
December 6, 2007 at 12:01 pm
This was indeed a very encouraging read!
Also, Had no idea that Profs in our alma-mater have turned a little net savvy. One of the reasons I am not in contact with any of them!
As far as the Issue in hand goes, I feel, its the inhibition amongst the majority, of this community and their inherent perception (that has been built into their mind set since childhood, by their religious leaders) that prevents them from believing or accepting anything from ppl not amongst themselves. Such a thing in turn magnifies as they grow, thus leading to their unpredictable or wrongly perceived social behaviour (unwillingness to return the lended money and restoring to violence to avoid any such foreseeable situation). Bank’s, at the end of the day are financial (and not charitable) institutions too and quiet understandably would shy away from such a situation!
To answer your question, No the religion directly doesnot have anything to do with the fact of not lending money, but the way its interpreted and imparted to the ppl of this commuinty by their not-so-communal religious leaders, which causes the chain reaction
BTW, Your post suddenly took me back to my RAWE days, in the midst of a busy office day
Incidentally, it too was a Muslim village, hence I could very well relate to with all the hidden inhibitions which are not necessarily mentioned in the quoted mail by Dr Mitra.
December 6, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Thnks Abhijitda,
“No the religion directly does not have anything to do with the fact of not lending money, but the way its interpreted and imparted to the ppl of this community by their not-so-communal religious leaders, which causes the chain reaction”….I understand your argument
April 1, 2008 at 11:07 pm
hi
my name shehbaaz
my home in Mumbra i am computer Enggi like india but i am work in (KSA)
kya jider muslim hai kya wo hi areya Negative hota hai
kya mumbra maih dosre cast ke log nahi rehte hai app logo se Ek request hai ki app log negative bulna jurd do . is ki hi waje se hamara india ya mumbra jasa koi our city possitive nahi ho paraha hai
by
April 2, 2008 at 1:25 pm
It would be uncharitable for anyone to say that it is risky to lend to Muslims. Indeed the only religion in this world is that of morality and ethics. In the final analysis, all of us lack morals and ethics, and it shows when we are caught in a dilemma of which one to subordinate to the other, between self interest and what is right on ethical grounds. In Hinduism, the only religion is that ofg a code to conquer lust, greed, etc. [aatma ripu]. While an individual, any individual, whether a street urchin Karim at the bottom level or George Bush at the highest echelons of office of a mighty nation, may react according to his nature, in this dilemma, where is the question of the individual’s religion ? There is now this tendency to almost invariably terrorism with Islam or ‘Islamism’, this is largely correct since a preponderant proportion of terrorists are Muslims, and this preponderance is due to the fact that it is very true, as someone commenting on this topic says, Muslims are more often, than any other people, brainwashed with some utterly anachronistic medieval tenets on Jihad. That is one extreme, while Hinduism, is on the other extreme, which almost teaches them to compromise with even perceived injustice, since it is due to Karma. Both are extremes. But, to extrapolate this negative, and largely valid perception of Muslims, to other areas, in this case lending to Muslims, to my mind, may not be justified. At any rate, the lender must be much more cautious these days. In Tamil, there is a famous statement of poet Kamban who wrote Kamba Ramayana, to the effect that Ravana feared death at the hands of Sri Rama, as he was approaching his fort with the Vaanaras, since his feeling of guilt - for having kidnapped Seeta - was now afflicting him with vengeance. And his fear is likened by poet Kamban to the feeling of a loanee who is unable to repay the loans to his lender since his lot it is to be left with less and less evern for his own maintenance. Now, since the loanee is no longer afraid, when he is unable to repay loans, it is the lender - maybe an Institution or an individual - who has to take all necessary precaution before lending, and do all monitoring as he recovers his loan. It is HIS care and discreet conduct as a lender which is more important. And this has nothing to do whether he has lent it to a Musli, Hindu, Parsi, Christian, …