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Designing for micro-credit
A DINNER I went to the other night was to celebrate a new dining table, a specially designed one. Its 24-inch thick central and sole leg was a twisted clump of what looked like banyan roots forming a fence around a hollow. The designer had found it at a Pondicherry shop that sold bric-a-brac. Now highly polished, it supported a single piece of glass top, a gently curved parallelogram with two facing angles, more widely curved and the other two sharply curved to provide a shape that must have a scientific name but which had the eight of us puzzled over what it might be. A candle lit in the hollow provided the glass a glow from below.
The guest of honour was, of course, the designer, banker K. M. (Raj) Thiagarajan, who, with more time on his hands after the ICICI takeover of the family-founded Bank of Madura, seemed to be moving on from creating maquettes, to be turned into striking modern stone sculpture by Mamallapuram craftsmen, to other creative activities like designing the table-of-the-evening. A more interesting design of his, I, however thought, was what he's spending much of his time on these days, namely propagating the micro-credit habit in rural areas and encouraging villagers to make use of banks.
The scheme, started by Thiagarajan when he was chairman of the Bank of Madura, has captured the interest of ICICI, who appear to want the idea to spread beyond the southern districts of Tamil Nadu where it was first experimented with. Today, the programme has over 2000 groups, each comprising about 20 members, about 90 per cent of them women's groups. The centre of operations remains Madurai and its south eastern neighbours, but over 30 per cent of the groups are now in other parts of Tamil Nadu and neighbouring States.
Rearing cattle, setting up grocery stores or food outlets, making snacks and preserved foods, and tailoring for the village are some of the business activities pursued by the members of the groups. Local agents of the bank and trainers encourage formation of the groups and advise the members.
Each group has to help itself during its first year, with the bank's staff coming in only to help them get used to the idea of business and banking. From the second year onwards, micro-credit is made available to the members, with the group itself as the guarantor. Default has been negligible, says Thiagarajan.
In fact, he adds, enjoying empowerment, many of the women's groups have established small group funds that they themselves administer, making available easy advances for emergencies.
Now, the programme calls for 200 women leaders from the groups to be trained to spread the message and encourage the formation of new groups, guiding them throughout their first year. He's looking for a geometric progression in the next few years of a design that deserves to succeed.
S.MUTHIAH
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