In early March, 30-year-old Pinky Devi took out her latest small loan in the densely populated state of Bihar, where she lives with her hus...
In early March, 30-year-old Pinky Devi took out her latest small loan in the densely populated state of Bihar, where she lives with her husband and two sons.
Like the other sums of rural credit Devi has borrowed over the last 12 years, the Rs 100,000 did not go to her work as a seamstress but instead to her breadwinner husband.
Thirty-two-year-old carpenter Sunil Kumar Sharma needed to buy a motorcycle for his latest furniture business so he could zip around their village to take orders. Taking out the loan fell to his wife: In India, as it is around the world, most microfinancing is available primarily to women.
As long as Sharma was working, they reasoned, paying back the steep weekly payment of Rs 2,900 would not be a problem. After all, the couple had used microfinancing to plug the gap in their finances for over a decade, and they had always managed to repay on time.
But a few weeks later, Covid-19 swept through India’s heartland, forcing the whole country into lockdown. Devi’s sewing orders instantly dried up and Sharma, like many in India, was taken by surprise by the government’s last-minute decision to shut down.
With only a few hours’ notice, he did not have time...
