MONEY TREE (13 page)

‘Anybody else?’

Ramesh smiled grimly. ‘All the people with caste, who lord it over those without. Over 150 million people in India have no caste. The euphemism is they belong to the ‘unscheduled’ caste. But they are still the old Untouchables, the Dalits. They sit at the bottom of every heap. They do the most menial jobs – like carrying away the shit of the higher castes. We lend money to anyone – especially to the Dalits – so the upper castes are faced with the possibility of having to clear up their own shit.’

He saw the reporter wince. It was
funny that Westerners used the word so often but only in the abstract. When confronted with its real meaning they were disgusted. A useful weapon.

‘I can see how that would make you unpopular.’

‘Yet there is another even bigger group who are not happy.’

‘Who?’

‘Men. Over 97% of our loans are to women. It frees them. It gives them power over their own destinies. Men don’t like that.’

‘W
hy don’t you lend to men?’

‘Women have more to lose. Women pay us back.
’ He leaned closer. ‘It is their
life
we are giving them.’

Despite himself,
Ted was finding it hard to stay cynical, far less angry at this quiet little man. He mustered another argument

‘Why are you
a pariah with organisations like the World Bank? They keep offering you cheap money. Surely you have common goals?’

‘They
too want me in their pocket. They want to list me in their annual report. To launder their conscience. While I keep them at bay, they are embarrassed by me. Ted, may I go off the record for a moment?’ Ted pressed pause on his recorder.

‘
A few years ago – before the Credit Crunch - I gave a speech at a conference in New York. Alec D. Paterson, the President of the World Bank was in the front row. But I did not pull any punches. After my speech – which was well received – he came up to me and shook my hand. Very deliberately and publicly. In front of the press, all the important people and a five hundred strong audience. All I could do was smile back. He said. . .’

‘
Ramesh. Loved your little talk. Goes right to the heart. But I think you have us wrong you know, and I’d like to straighten the record. Why don’t you and me get together and sort out how we can help? I’ve made plenty of offers, but you keep turning me down.’ Paterson kept smiling as he talked.

Ramesh
smiled back. ‘Thank you, but perhaps you missed the middle part of my talk? Where I set out why organisations like yours have never helped the poor and never could. By their very nature.’

To the rest of the audience they were key figures on the world financial stage, talking like colleagues, sharing ideas and intents.

‘I heard it. And I wanted to get my side over to you. I told you, I think you’ve got us wrong. You’re going to need us, you know.’

‘
Thank you. But you have nothing we need.’

‘Everybody needs money. Especially charities.
’

‘
We are not a charity. We are a bank. We make our own money. We have 250 million customers who borrow from us and – unusually it seems – repay us.’

Paterson took his arm.
‘Ramesh, you’re a smart guy. You’ve been on Wall Street. Don’t you want to play at the big table again? Where it matters? I could get you on to the right boards, get you the right - shall we say recognition? Including financial recognition?’

Ramesh looked down at the white hand gripping his arm.

‘My present recognition as you put it, is adequate for my needs.’

Paterson smiled and put his mouth close to
Ramesh’s ear.

‘Then fuck you, Mr Bane
rjee. Fuck you.’

The President of the World Bank
pinched his arm and walked off.

Ted asked, ‘Are you sure you want this off the record?’

‘
My word against the Chairman of the World Bank? His army of lawyers?’

‘But they do
some good. With all that money?’ Ted persisted.

Ramesh
smiled grimly. ‘The way to get on in the World Bank is to have the biggest investment budgets to spend on the highest profile projects. If someone can find a way of spending $500 million on a project to build a dam in Africa then he gets noticed and gets promoted.’

‘But these projects are useful surely? Maybe the motivation is wrong, but the results are worth having?’

‘Are they? Who gets the money? Not the poorest. Not the locals even. The money goes into the pockets of the international companies with the tools and the expertise to build big dams, or roads or airports. It goes to the consultants and the money men who fly in and out first class, and stay at the nearest Oberoi.’ Ted wondered if he was being watched. ‘And most of all, it goes to the middlemen, the government backers and intermediaries. We might as well send it straight to their numbered accounts in Switzerland.’ 

Ted
switched his recorder back on.

‘What have they got on you? Or are they making it up?’

For the first time Ramesh’s trained ear heard no cynicism in the last question. Maybe he was getting through to the big man.

‘
They are bribing influential people and planting evidence which is then leaked to the press.’ He looked meaningfully at Ted. ‘Including the foreign press.’’

‘What else?’

‘For some months now we have been hit by a series of technical problems. It is a moot point whether we will be shut down by the Supreme Court or sabotage.’

‘Who do you blame?’

Ted saw the pieces beginning to form an uncomfortable picture, part of which showed a spineless reporter being guided like a dumb steer.

‘I fear we have little proof at this stage.
And I don’t want a libel suit on top of the present problems.’

‘
Maybe I can do a little fishing in my column?’

‘I will be most interested to see how you portray our little chat,
Ted. One never knows with the press, does one?’ His tone left no doubt about how low he set his expectations.

‘But I almost forgot. I have a small present for you.’
Ramesh pulled open his desk drawer. ‘Unless you have already read it?’ He placed a pristine paperback of E M Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’ on the table.

Ted
smiled to hide his surprise. ‘Am I being bribed?’

‘Enlightened perhaps?’

Ted took the offering and stood up, towering over the little man. ‘Thanks Ramesh. Make sure you check tomorrow’s Tribune.’

A
nila spoke to first one then the other. It was easy to get their attention. Everyone knew that Anila was trying to break away from the money lender and do her own business. What they had not expected was her call to revolution!

‘We would form an agreement to buy the wood direct from Mr Roy. We would not borrow the money from Mr Chowdury.’

‘But Anila Jhabvala, where would we get the money from? We have no money.’

‘I have enough to get us started. I could afford to buy five days of Mr Roy’s entire wood if we had to. But we would not even need five days. The agent comes every week, so it would only be another four days before you sold your work. Then you would pay me back and pay back Mr Chowdury for the loan for the last three days. And then we could afford to buy the next week’s wood for us all.’

‘But how is that better Anila? It sounds like you have become Mr Chowdury! What is the difference between one money lender and another we want to know?! Except you are inexperienced and maybe you will run out of money and we will all have to beg Chowdury to help us and he will probably put up his rates.’   

‘It is much better, because I don’t want to make a profit from you. All I want is to be able to buy my own wood. But Mr Roy is committed to selling it all to Chowdury because Chowdury puts pressure on him. If I cannot buy the whole pile of wood at a better price, then Mr Roy will not sell it to me.’

‘You really mean we could buy the wood cheaper from you and you would not want any profit?’

‘That is right. On my word. In the name of Laxmi, goddess of wealth, this is what the arrangement would be.’

‘And we would then sell the stuff we make directly to the agent? And we would keep the profit?’

‘Now you see.’ Anila hoped they did. They broke into voice. 

‘It is too good to be true…

‘I will have to ask my husband…

‘I will have to think about it…

‘I will only join the cooperative if everyone else does…

‘I will wait and see how it goes for a while and then maybe…’

And so on and so on. The excuses for not joining in with Anila’s proposal piled up. But she knew if she could per
suade more than half, the others would fall in. She now had the entire group of women round her – twelve in all – and she let them argue and debate the issues for a long time. This needed time. She could not push them. She let them gnaw the idea to shreds. Then as the debate was going round the same point for the third or maybe fourth time, she reached inside her sari and pulled out the small leather bag that hung by a cord round her neck.

She quietly tugged at its top and pulled the neck apart. She reached inside knowing she’d caught the attention of several of the sitting women. They in turn nudged their neighbour as Anila brought out a thick wad of Rupees. She began to count it slowly in front of them. She laid one bill on top of another and counted out loud until she’d reached 3,000 rupees. It was the total amount given to the three of them by the bank. It was more than most of them had seen in one pile in their lives. Anila was breathing hard as she finished. Only 1000 belonged to her, and neither Leena nor Divya were here to defend their share. She had no right to be flaunting the others’ money, but she knew it would give her more credibility. They all looked at her and then at the pile.

‘Here is our start. Tomorrow when Mr Roy comes back with his truck I will give him 600 rupees on behalf of this cooperative. Then you will each take the wood you need and make your chair or your basket or your mats. Then four days after, you will sell your chair and give me the cost of the wood. You will keep the profit and make your husbands very happy!’ Anila braved their looks.

One of them, a big woman called Sandip, cursed with four daughters, broke the spell. ‘It sounds like a good deal to me. I will join your cooperative Anila. Think what I can buy with the extra money? Why, I could get a whole chicken every week for the profit I would make! Instead of always eating rice!’

It was the breaking of the dam. The others began to do quick sums, scratching in the dust with fingers and twigs. The numbers made sense.  In a state of excitement and anxiety, the entire group of women rose up like a startled cloud of birds-of-paradise. They clasped hands and swore to work as a cooperative. They vowed to meet at the same time tomorrow and support Anila in transacting their first deal.

As Anila watched them go, chattering in little groups, she hoped their enthusiasm would last the night. Anila turned and headed home. She had planned not to tell her mother what had happened until everything was in pl
ace and working, but a village gossip mill pours out its news at the speed of a monsoon river. By the time she got home her mother was waiting for her in tears.

‘You have gone too far
, Anila! This is the end of you and your daughter and your mother! Don’t tell me, I know! You are trying to become a big trader and a money lender. I hear it all round about. And the Panchayat will meet and throw us out of the village and we will be destitute and die in the hills! Or we will have to go to the city and beg or become prostitutes. I am too old to do this and I will just kill myself rather than face such a life. How can you do this?!’

Her mother was wailing and weeping now. She knelt and pulled her shawl over her grey head and smote her head on the ground. Anila quickly knelt alongside her and pulled her up into her arms.

‘Mother, mother, you have it all wrong. It is not like this at all. Mr Roy is going to sell me all his wood every day and we will work with the other women as a cooperative. In four days’ time when the agent comes, we will sell all our work and the women will give me back the money for the wood.’

Her mother wailed harder. ‘How can you buy so much wood every day!? You will use up all your money and we will starve. This is madness, daughter. Stop it before we are all lost!’

‘Listen to me. There are twelve women now who are working together. Like the cooperatives that have been set up in other places. I am only helping with the first few days of funding. Then once we are going, the other women will pay me back. You will see.’

In her heart, Anila was terrified of tomorrow. Then she would know if the women would stand by her. Overnight, people have a chance to cool down. They might not think it such a good idea in the morning. Husbands have ways of applying pressure. But she smiled and looked confident in front of her mother.

Her mother’s tears were drying. They were face to face in the dust in front of the hut. Behind them Anila could see her daughter clinging to the door post, her thumb in her mouth, and looking scared.