responded: “For three days, my child
has been crying for some fish and rice,
and I have been promising it to her. I
only have rice at home, and don’t know
how to make her eat it without the fish.
Can you tell me how?”G
utted by the devastating penury
he saw wherever work took him,
Ghosh was determined to act.
He thought about avenues of income
generation, particularly for women,
the primary caregivers of children. But
women were also challenged by patri-
archy, which compromised their abil-
ity to access livelihoods. “This is a cycle
that needed to be broken,” says Ghosh.
Around this time, an interesting
phenomenon caught his attention. In
Kolkata’s markets, Ghosh noticed lo-
cal moneylenders on motorbikes, who
lent vendors `500 each and took away
`5 as interest. “I wondered why the
borrowers were willing to pay more
than 700 per cent interest a year?” says
Ghosh. The vegetable sellers, particu-
larly the women, said it was a godsend
for them. Their loans were delivered
to them, without delays or paperwork.
What if I took a bank loan and instead
of `5, charged `1? Ghosh thought. This
way the vendor would make `4, their
income would go up and they can scale
their business.
This idea obsessed him, until one
day he returned home and announced
to his wife Nilima that he would quit
his job, to start a microfinance NGO.
“I started weeping when I heard this,”says Nilima Ghosh. Her brother also
tried very hard to persuade Ghosh to
not give up the security of a monthly
salary—then `5,000—for an absurd
dream. “Even though everyone be-
lieved I was making a mistake, I was
convinced I’d be successful,” says
Ghosh. Running the family became
difficult, yet Ghosh went ahead.
He soon discovered that raising loans
for the poor was quite impossible. “But
I spotted the potential, so I remained
steadfast in my belief,” he says. After
approaching banks and financial in-
stitutions, he failed to make the loan
criteria. Investing an initial sum of
`2 lakh, raised from friends and family,
Ghosh started his microfinance NGO,
Bandhan–Konnagar, “just to prove to
the banks that the model was sound.”
The turning point came after
18 months, in September 2002, when
SIDBI (Small Industries Development
Bank of India) approved `20 lakh as
loan. “Without scaling up, we would
not be able to make an impact,” says
Ghosh. To access big funding, all mi-
crofinance work had to be transferred
from the NGO to an NBFC (Non-Bank-
ing Financial Company).
Attracting talent was Ghosh’s next big
challenge. He set up some extraordi-
nary criteria after struggling initially—
candidates who had passed higher
secondary exams in the third division,
and were around 23 years old, were
asked to apply. “I wanted people with
hunger, who knew exactly how tough
the market was. These are the people22 february 2020
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