EU threat to farmers

Fish and a philosophy

Universal health scare

Cooperative in spirit

Letters - February 15, 2012

A farmer’s take

Profit from the poor

Ega Mounika was born into debt, lived in debt and died with debts. The college-going 20-year-old of Warangal’s Karimabad village immolated herself on September 25; three days later, she died. “My daughter wanted to release us from debt,” said her father Laxmi Narayan who sustained burn injuries trying to rescue her. He owns a paan shop and always had debts, which is why no bank found him worthy of a loan. So five years ago, when a microfinance institution (MFI) approached her mother, a beedi roller, offering a loan of Rs 10,000, Mounika was quick to say yes. She bought a sewing machine with the money, started a tailoring business, dividing her time between studies and the new machine. “Things were fine for two weeks,” said Narayan, “then we began to default.” Loan repayment is usually weekly in microfinance.

When villages plug in

In Nepal, lost in the chaos of political upheavals, a silent revolution is afoot.

Rising popularity of artificial vanilla puts Kerala farmers in distress

 

Safal shows the way

Call it the Safal model. For close to 25 years, a large chunk of households in the National Capital Region have had access to fresh fruits and vegetables at affordable prices—at rates much lower than what the local vegetable and fruits market or the handcart vendor would charge. This was made possible by standing the concept of buying on its head. Instead of the farmer coming all the way to markets where the middleman would fleece him and where he had to pay steep taxes, the market went to his doorstep. As a result, customers could get the fresh products daily, making the farm-to-fork concept a reality long before retail chains began doing so in the metros. It is the Safal model that these chains also employ.

Rise And Rise Of MFIs

The total demand for micro-credit in the country has been estimated at Rs 50,000 crore. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) estimates that in 256 of India’s 626 districts the credit gap is at least 95 per cent or more. Most mfis are concentrated in these districts, including two of the country’s largest—Spandana Spoorthy Innovative Financial Services Limited and Swayam Krishi Sangam (SKS) Microfinance.