VILLAGE DIARY OF A
HERETIC BANKER is more a diary than an instructive guide. The diary
provides the flavour of the author’s personal experiences as a rural banker and
his engagement with the poor in the remote crannies of India. The seed around
which the book crystallises is the intrinsic tenacity and grit of poor rural
women that can be harnessed into energetic powerhouses to drive our rural
society onto the road to prosperity. The book carries in its pages the poignant
nostalgia of the author for villages but it is also tinged at places with rage
and despair. The message in this book is that there is no grand, universal
formula for poverty reduction. The battle has to be fought on several fronts
and what works in one place does not necessarily work everywhere. The way
forward lies in grassroots field experiments for understanding the causal
relationships in poor people’s behaviour and in learning by doing. The author’s faith in poor people’s
ability to climb out of the rut is unshakeable and his core belief is
gradualism. The author believes that lasting social change most often—and
perhaps always—comes slowly rather than in a burst of revolutionary fervour. It
is this belief that has shaped his work. He also believes that lasting change
can be effected only when women are given equal opportunities for financial
empowerment
The author firmly believes that it is possible to eliminate poverty in
our country—provided we re-examine the received wisdom of our assumptions. The
poor are poor not because they are unskilled or illiterate but because they
cannot retain the returns of their labour. They neither own capital, nor does
anyone give them access to credit, except on the most unreasonable terms. They
live on the edge, in constant fear of a catastrophe or tragedy, but they have
no insurance because insurance companies consider them a losing proposition.
And the State’s social safety nets are not only grossly inadequate but mired in
corruption and bureaucratic red tape.
During
his efforts in development finance and rural development work for over three
decades, the author has seen projects and strategies succeed as well as fail.
He has seen misguided project designs, poor implementation and squandering of
large sums of money. But he also witnessed incredible achievements. When
development works well, he argues, it can transform lives by providing the
underprivileged the capital and knowledge that can open up opportunities for
them and reduce their poverty.
VILLAGE DIARY OF A
HERETIC BANKER is more a diary than an instructive guide. The diary
provides the flavour of the author’s personal experiences as a rural banker and
his engagement with the poor in the remote crannies of India. The seed around
which the book crystallises is the intrinsic tenacity and grit of poor rural
women that can be harnessed into energetic powerhouses to drive our rural
society onto the road to prosperity. The book carries in its pages the poignant
nostalgia of the author for villages but it is also tinged at places with rage
and despair. The message in this book is that there is no grand, universal
formula for poverty reduction. The battle has to be fought on several fronts
and what works in one place does not necessarily work everywhere. The way
forward lies in grassroots field experiments for understanding the causal
relationships in poor people’s behaviour and in learning by doing. The author’s faith in poor people’s
ability to climb out of the rut is unshakeable and his core belief is
gradualism. The author believes that lasting social change most often—and
perhaps always—comes slowly rather than in a burst of revolutionary fervour. It
is this belief that has shaped his work. He also believes that lasting change
can be effected only when women are given equal opportunities for financial
empowerment
The author firmly believes that it is possible to eliminate poverty in
our country—provided we re-examine the received wisdom of our assumptions. The
poor are poor not because they are unskilled or illiterate but because they
cannot retain the returns of their labour. They neither own capital, nor does
anyone give them access to credit, except on the most unreasonable terms. They
live on the edge, in constant fear of a catastrophe or tragedy, but they have
no insurance because insurance companies consider them a losing proposition.
And the State’s social safety nets are not only grossly inadequate but mired in
corruption and bureaucratic red tape.
During
his efforts in development finance and rural development work for over three
decades, the author has seen projects and strategies succeed as well as fail.
He has seen misguided project designs, poor implementation and squandering of
large sums of money. But he also witnessed incredible achievements. When
development works well, he argues, it can transform lives by providing the
underprivileged the capital and knowledge that can open up opportunities for
them and reduce their poverty.
