In the field

As you may have determined because I have been updating this blog over the past few days, I ended up arriving in Lucknow safely. Huzzah!

While here, I will be working at the microfinance firm Nirmaan Bharati. The firm provides very small loans (5,000-18,000 Rs., or about $100-360) to people who do not have access to banks and need financial assistance. The process goes as follows. People often hear about the firm through word of mouth, so clients proliferate through slum neighborhoods quickly. As a rule, only women are given loans and only one loan is given per family. Women interested will approach a manager out in the field. Groups of 10 clients are formed. This group of 10 is the loan group, and it is this group that will meet weekly with the center manager to make payments. Rather than the firm exacting any penalties on clients who do not pay (what are they going to do, sue them?), these groups provide a kind of "joint-ownership" of the loan process, and so peer pressure is often the deciding factor.

A new client will take a 3 day class that explains the basics of the loan, loans generally, basic finance and the best way to use the money over the next year. It is a rule that the money must be used for a productive purpose. So, for example, the loan may be used to buy a vegetable stand that was once rented, or hire an extra set of hands to increase embroidery output. The money cannot be used to simply purchase food or any other material good. Once the loan is given, the clients have one year to pay back the money plus interest. For a client on a 10,000 R. plan, that amounts to 220 Rs. per week, or about $4.35 (these conversions are very approximate, so you know).

That is a very rough sketch of what the firm provides. Anyway, for the first two days on the job (Thursday and Friday), I went out into the field with two different center managers to observe the collection of these loan payments. Without a doubt, this was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. First off, I rode a motorcycle for probably 4 hours over the course of two days, which was a thrill. But secondly, a more importantly, I had never seen such poverty before in my entire life. I have seen, talked with, eaten with the homeless in New York City...I have witnessed the tenements and the projects and seen the aftermath of Katrina blazing across TV screens like so many Americans. But this was different. The homes of many were no more than huts built out of plastic and bicycle tires. If they were lucky, families lived in a shack that looked like a brick building after a bombing - crumbled and roofless, with only a sheet for a door. I saw children, naked from the waste down, playing in mounds of trash that looked like hills. I saw men sleeping with dogs on the side of the street, covered in flies and dirt, lifeless except for a shallow, barely visible breath.

Some of the groups were good. We knocked on the door or called out the group leader's name and she would quickly invite us in with a big smile. She would hurriedly find chairs, often plastic lawn chairs, or clean off the edge of the bed and have us sit, before sitting down on the floor in front of us. If the group was particularly good, they would be sitting in two lines, as they had been taught at the beginning 3 day workshop. The women farthest to the left in each line was a line leader, and would collect the money from each woman, count it, and hand it over to the center manager. He would then take attendance and sign off on each of their loan sheets, which the group leader (farthest left in the front line) keeps in between meetings. Of the 24 groups that I visited, only one acted in this manner.

Far more often groups were incomplete and disorderly. While Nirmaan Bharati experienced a 0% default rate during its first year, this year they face an increasing number of overdue payments. There are more and more microfinance firms competing for the same clients in Lucknow, and the people realize that they can not pay us back and still get a loan from another firm next year. The peer pressure of joint group sessions only goes so far. One group we visited was not even a group at all. One woman, the group leader, was there, and she wasn't going to pay. She yelled at the center manager who calmly listened. He asked her the reasoning behind her refusal to pay and started on the talking points the firm has prepared. She became angry once again and we left as she yelled us out the door. Since none of the other 9 clients showed up, we spent the next hour searching for them throughout the slum. Some have moved away and all that remains is a bare hole in the wall, clearly vacated recently. Others are found but ignore us, shut the door in our faces, run away or send their kids out to tell us to leave. It is tiring work.

You should realize also that I understand none of these exchanges between manager and client. None of these people speak English. But after hours in these slums, that no longer matters. The conversations all seem the same...and the weight grows heavier and heavier on the center manager's back as fewer and fewer people provide payments. We left at 8:30 in the morning and returned by about 4.

I have painted a rather stark picture of the slums, and I stand by it, but there is more to the story. Despite the horrifying conditions many of these people lived in, I have never seen so many happy faces. Truly, I heard more laughter and saw more full-toothed smiles than I ever would have imagined when I first stepped off the bike and surveyed these rotting slum neighborhoods. This idea, that humanity lives on no matter what, is no doubt cliched and trite by this point, but I guess I needed to see it first hand to really understand what that meant.

Anyway, I attached some pictures of things I saw. I couldn't take as many pictures as I would have liked because I didn't want to draw attention to myself or disrespect my hosts. Sorry for the long post, and for those of you still here (Hi Mom and Dad!), thanks for reading!