Free Where Angels Prey by Ramesh S Arunachalam

originally hailed from Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, they had moved to Andhra Pradesh more than three generations ago. She had been more than happy when she had been allotted to serve in Andhra Pradesh after being inducted into the IAS cadre.
    Veena’s grandfather had always teased her saying that she had a penchant for drama. Or, maybe, drama had a penchant for her. She had made her entry into the world on a stormy night, complete with lightning flashes and thunder bolts. Ever since then, things were always happening around her or she was where things were happening. Her first assignment as DM was quite a dramatic one too. Located between the Krishna and the Godavari delta, the Kolleru Lake is the second largest fresh water lake in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Almost 15,000 acres of the lake had been encroached upon by the land mafia. Veena had headed the Kolleru operation, which took on the might of the local heavyweight politicians who were part of the land mafia.
    Veena further initiated “Palle Nidra”, an innovative programme that involved making a night halt at villages along with officials and public representatives. It was during one such halt that Veena had come to know certain unsavoury truths regarding the MFIs operating in the area. Truths that led to the ballooning of what has been described as the Krishna crisis. It was a curious case of protectors turning predators. There were three major complaints against the MFIs operating there: one, that they were charging exorbitantly high rates of interest, ranging from 40 to 60 per cent per annum; the second was that they were abusing human rights by detaining relatives of defaulters or suggesting to them that the borrower commit suicide so they could claim the insurance money; and three, that they were creating large-scale rural indebtedness.
    Yet another key reason that triggered off the Krishna crisis was the rivalry between the public sector bank-supported SHG Bank linkage programme, funded by an international donor and the Andhra Pradesh government, and the private sector MFIs, funded by robust private sector and foreign banks. Keen to show better results, the MFIs had adopted a variety of underhand and anti-client measures to boost their profits. The spate of suicides was the reason why their unsavoury and illegal activities were exposed, leading to their suspension. Interestingly the suicides, as a consequence of indebtedness, started increasing from 2006, when the state government started encouraging the growth of MFIs as an alternative to public sector banks. MFIs had shown scant regard for the laws of the state while lending to the poor and they often flaunted their certificates of registration with the Federal Banking Regulator to prevent any action by the state government.
    During one of her visits to the villages, Veena had met the family of Victoria, who had pledged her ration card and then the
mangalsutra
of her newly married daughter with an MFI in order to meet emergency expenses. This was in gross violation of the FBR norms which prohibited MFIs from taking collateral for the loans provided under the microcredit category. Subsequently, the MFI recovery agents had applied severe pressure on Victoria to make repayments and, finding herself unable to meet their demands, she had committed suicide.
    An infuriated Veena had raided the offices of many MFIs in the region, including Aashray, DevEx and Sowmya, among others, and had charged them with collection of higher interest rates, almost to the tune of 40 per cent, and for harassing borrowers. In the process of the raids, they had also unearthed signed blank demand promissory notes at many of their premises.
    There was also evidence of Aashray and DevEx, two competing MFIs, indulging in sleazy and underhand tactics in order to undercut each other. Aashray had tried to disrupt the operations of DevEx by plying the husbands of their field staff with liquor. This way, they hoped, the husbands would not allow