Wandering About in Slumdog Land | Part 2: The Mobile Edge
Danny Boyle’s, eight Academy Awards winning yet controversial film Slumdog Millionaire, set and filmed in India, gave the country another name derivative – the Slumdog Land. The name tagging apart, the film also carried a deeper symbolism for India, a land of many contradictions.
As India surges forward in taking big strides of development, there are millions of slumdogs, aspiring to become millionaires all over the country in their own entrepreneurial ways. The making of new India thus needs a thoughtful blend of big ticket macro development as well as the inclusive growth of micro-small-mid sized enterprises for a sustainable growth movement.
Nano Vs Vano, 10th and 11th Feb 2009: Kolkata and the state of West Bengal have been in the news of late for all the wrong reasons. The most heart-wrenching bad news was perhaps the loss of the prestigious Nano small-car project of the Tata’s due to land acquisition problems and subsequent politicizing of the issue. The ‘never-say-die’ Bengali optimism however saw a great future for the ‘Vano’ in the state. For one thing, local experts pointed out, the Vano could accommodate more people than the Nano!
- The ‘Vano’! For some strange reason, these contraptions are called vans. Earlier, these used to be ‘pedalled’ by the driver like a bicycle, but these days mechanized versions have taken over. One has the safer option of sitting cross-legged on the Vano or the more adventurous option of sitting along the edge with feet dangling!
Unfortunately, our work in Kolkata did not involve taking a ride on the Vano. Instead, we drove our more conventional car to the offices of a microfinance institution somewhere on a nondescript lane not far from the Airport, given the fact that aircrafts periodically zoomed past overhead.
In just a few years, this organization had grown rapidly and now had more than 40 branches, providing microloans to more than 6
0,000 poor women. The organization was founded and continued to be managed by two local entrepreneurial men in their late thirties or early forties. A small double-storied residential house served as their head office, where around 20 people worked. Having grown rapidly, funded by various public and private sector banks and financial institutions, they were now in the process of installing an MIS system to automate their operations. We had come to review their ongoing automation efforts.
As a part of our review, we also visited a group of their poor borrowers who were busy with their customary ‘group meeting’ where the twenty-odd members of the group got together, along with their loan officer, to hand over their weekly repayment amounts and discuss various related issues. Most of the ladies in the group were mid-aged women, who borrowed the money to carry out income-supplementing activities. Some sold sarees and dress material in their community.
Loan Officer collecting loan repayments and updating records at the Group Meeting
Group Meeting in progress
Borrowers visit the MFI's branch office to collect a fresh loan after repaying the earlier one
One supplied stationary items to a few local schools. Yet others had opened grocery stores. One even had a cycle shop, where she and her husband worked as a team to repair bicycles, rickshaws and vans (vanos?) These income-generating activities went a long way in augmenting the household incomes enabling them to send their children to school and buy TVs, ceiling fans and furniture. All of the women in the group were owners of cell phones, which they felt had become essential components of their day-to-day personal as well as business lives.
In fact, a later survey conducted by me for another MFI operating in and around Kolkata indicated that indeed 100% of the Kolkata microfinance borrowers used mobile phones. If the adjoining semi urban districts were considered, the number of mobile phone users stood at 59%, still a significant segment. On the other hand, only 28% of the respondents had savings accounts i. The fact that the cell phone will play an increasingly crucial role in coming years was very clear from this experience.
On the way back, the branch manager, who had accompanied us, mentioned that although the loans were collateral-free, they took care to give loans only to those women who were permanent residents and whose families had ownership of some real estate/housing property in the area. Migrant workers or those who had no local ownership of any sort, were considered too risky. There are so many of such migrants, I thought. Can the MFIs not design some loan products to suit their needs? Migrant workers remitted money back home by way of savings. Could that be somehow facilitated? Could they be provided with proper savings accounts?
Was the ubiquitous mobile phone ringing out a message, loud and clear? Anyway, that is of course another story. 
To be continued …
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i On a macro level, India had 55 million bank accounts while mobile phone owners had surged to over 300 million, increasing at the rate of 10 million each year!
