When poverty stricken far­mers default on lo­ans, ma­ny banks, including nationalised ones, hound them mercilessly to make them repay the loan.

I quote from an AP report; “Ram Babu’s last days were typical in India’s growing rash of suicides. The poor fa­rmer's crop failed and he defaulted on the $6,000 loan he had ta­ken to buy a tractor. The bank's collectors hounded hi­m, even hiring drummers to go round the village drawing attention to his sh­ame.”

“My father found it unbe­arable. He was an honou­r­able man and he couldn't ta­ke the humiliation. The next day he hanged himself from a tree on our farm,” his son Ram Gu­lam said.

This is just one story of an unfortunate chronically pov­erty stricken farmer, like the millions inhabiting the real India, the forgotten and neglected India, of its villages.

In the time of need they turn to loan sharks and ba­nks, and when hard times befall them and they are unable to repay the loans, the loan recovery process employed by their creditors is so humiliating, they are driven to end it all by committing suicide.

I remember when I was attempting to be an entrepreneur; I decided to buy a Desk Top Publishing system and start a typesetting, layout and design service.

Not having money of my own, I appr­oa­ch­ed a national­ised bank to le­nd me Rs 2.5 lakh. I completed all the procedures and furnished all so­rts of guarantees and su­re­ti­es that I was asked to provide and finally the loan was sanctioned.

I was jubilant but my joy was short li­ved. I wasn’t able to run the business efficiently and fell back in repaying the loan. So­on the arrears accumulated and the interest became compounded. The ba­nk now started hounding me to recover the money; my life became hell.

They were just doing their job, but I was suffering. The humiliation of failing yet ag­ain was compounded by the sh­ame of being told that I was a dishonest defaulter.

One of the most humiliating moments of my life happened when my son was born. I wanted to celebrate my joy with the world and, as is the Indian tradition, I distributed sweets to family, fri­ends, and acquaintances. In my enthusiasm and joy I took a box full of pedhas to the bank.

To my shock and horror the loan officer mocked me, in a loud voice he said that I wasn’t able to repay my loan but was celebrating shamele­s­sly. He alleged that I was celebrating with the money I had swindled from the bank. He wasn’t wrong, I was a defaulter; I had borrowed mo­ney from the bank and was not able to repay it. But the intention was never to cheat the bank. I had even pledged my wife’s jewellery as a security, when I started failing to repay the loan.

I finally ran my business into the ground, my equipment became obsolete and I did not have money to repl­ace it. To top it all, the tactics of the bank officials became even more humiliating.

Many a time, in those unbearable days, I contemplated suicide, to escape my responsibility and to avoid further humiliation. I don’t bl­ame the bank officials — they were just doing their job. I was at fault, but I wasn’t intentionally defrauding the ba­nk. It wasn’t as if while not paying back what I owed the bank I was living lavishly.

Finally, it was my father who bailed me out. Due to his benevolence, I managed to pay off the loan along with all the accumulated interests and pen­alties — every paisa I owed the bank.

The day I repaid the loan and cleared all that I owed, I was relived and the bank officials were relived, too — they had done the job assigned to them. They didn’t realise that in all their efficiency, they almost killed me.

I can understand how Ram Babu must have felt when he decided to hang himself from a tree and end it all — the proud man must not have be­en able to live down the sha­me of his humiliation; death felt to him a better option. The bank was just trying to get back what was rightfully theirs.

The mistake both Ram Babu and I made was that we borrowed small amounts and defaulted on repaying them.

If we had borrowed hundreds of crores of rupees and then bankrupted our businesses, the banks and the go­vernment would have ru­shed to our rescue and offered us many more hundreds of cr­o­res so that our businesses did not crash and we continued enjoying the good times.

(The writer is founder president, Mahatma Gandhi Foundation)