MONEY TREE (20 page)

‘I prefer the carpe diem philosophy myself,’ she said.

‘That too has its place. Shall we meet some of my people?’

He led them from the cool sanctuary into a huge noisy hall that looked like it had once been three separate rooms. It was an incongruous blend of oak panelling and ra
cks of modern technology, crammed with people. Enough computer screens to fight Star Wars. Ranks of air con units pounding away in a losing battle against the sauna temperatures.

They threaded their way to the epicentre of the maze, tripping over cables as they went. They found themselves at a small round table that seemed to be used for ad hoc meetings. Around it, with their backs to them and their fingers clacking over keyboards, was a circle of young men and women. Most wore headsets and were talking as they typed. The hubbub was immense.

CJ raised his voice. ‘This is the heart of the bank. Around you is the core technology that handles all our customer accounts, and networks together the call centres we’ve set up in other cities. Over there is our Internet banking team. And over there is the control centre of our branch banking network. This circle of people,’ he indicated the group ringed about them and the table, ‘are the lead technicians for each of the sections.

‘They all look about sixteen.’
Ted cupped a comment to Erin.

‘
Young and quick. Lovely.’ She was chirpy. This was her element.  

CJ was tapping shoulders and signalling. About half the young people in the ring turned round and rolled over to the centre table on their wheeled chairs. They gazed curiously at the Westerners.

‘Ok, Action Woman, this one’s yours,’ Ted said gallantly.

Erin
pulled up a spare chair and sat down at the table. Ted joined her. CJ made the introductions. A young man touchingly raised his hand.

‘Please, shall I go first
, CJ?’

‘Why not? This is Vikram Vajpayee. He is the team leader of our branch banking division. Tell them what has been going on Vikram.’

Ted didn’t understand all of it, but Erin clearly did, from the way she kept asking questions and the way the conversation got increasingly heated as Vikram showed her examples on his main screens and on his tablet.

The
bank was broken down into districts and branches. The branches operated autonomously day to day, apart from central direction about bank rates. As often as not, the branches were little more than a secure van equipped with a computer and satellite phone. The branch ‘manager’ – usually a woman, drove round her district, setting up mobile phone accounts, and then organising savings and loans and collecting repayments. Vikram called up a Google map of India on his tablet, zeroed in on some areas to show how huge a slab of territory could be covered by one branch.

They
appointed local representatives in selected villages and gave them laptops with solar power units and satellite internet links with the rest of the bank network. Each day they’d do their entries and email the information to the branch officer and then to head office here in this room in Delhi. Every few days the branch manager would make for a district office and deposit the cash. For security they were never allowed to hold more than the Rupee equivalent of $500 in their van.

Vikram got onto the dirty tricks.
It varied between jamming transmissions so that half the branches were unable to report, or sending waves of dummy transactions to flood the servers at head office. Sometimes the floods went the other way, as if from the Delhi centre, and knocked out the district computer and the van laptop when they logged in.

Vikram and his team were working round the clock –
he meant it literally – to rebuild firewalls and create new security codes that would counter the attacks. There would be a few days’ grace then another onslaught would begin, using different techniques and volumes. The story was similar from Shivani Jaffrey, a young woman who ran the Internet team. There was no hint of surrender about her. A clear light of battle was in her big dark eyes.

‘We have over 2
50 million Internet accounts now. More than most banks have customers. Over 70% are from outside India. We give them the same range of account facilities as our branch customers. But because we can manage so many people over the Internet, we can keep the costs very low and give very good deposit rates and interest on current accounts.’ Erin looked impressed and Shivani looked proud to bursting.

‘Like Vikram
’s branches, we are being hit by waves of dummy transactions. The first couple of times it happened we lost our servers for two days! The next time, we were better prepared but they still went down for a few hours. We have added lots more servers and rebuilt our own firewall software to sift and kill the ones that are wrecking us. Only the good ones can get through from our real customers.’

Shivani went on, ‘But they have got hold of some of our customer identities and also set up dummy accounts with us. They use those as Trojan horses to get in through the firewalls and release some nasty viruses that attack our customer account files. Fortunately our
virus detector software is very strong. We have so far managed to kill every one! But we are worried,’ she became solemn, ‘the next one may get through. So we are having to build redundancy into all our records. We keep complete back-up files for months in separate systems. Separate buildings even.’

Erin
was nodding all the while. ‘We have a very clever friend who’s one of the best -’ she groped for a polite way of describing Oscar ‘- software specialists in the business. And we would like to get him to look at what’s happening here. He may have some ideas. He’s very experienced in dealing with hacking and counter hacking.’

‘What is he called?’ asked Vikram with a little hint of knowing something about the opaque world Oscar operated in. ‘Is he a hacker?’

‘His real name is Oscar, but he uses a different handle. He’s called ‘The Lone Ranger’ . . . on the dark net’. Erin tried not to sound silly. 

There was a flurry of smiles and chatter among the kids round the table. Then Vikram turned to
Erin.

‘We know this man. He is one of the best. Or the worst. Are you sure he is on your side? How do we contact him?’

‘Give me your email address now and I’ll text him. I’ll call him this evening to make sure he’s opened up secure channels with you.’

They left them to their battle.
Ted wondered what these young people and one gay hacker could really do against a western bank with thousands of top technologists and the best computer systems dollars could buy. He still hadn’t entirely squared away the notion that they were making money out of the neediest, but none of the bank employees seemed in the slightest doubt about the morality of their work. That was convincing enough for his next column, but apparently not for Erin. He listened with a sense of stunned outrage and impending doom as she set him up for a further test of stamina.

‘CJ, all
Ted needs now is to meet some of your clients and maybe spend some time at one of your branches.’ She turned to Ted. ‘You can pop out and visit a village while I sort out the links with Oscar.’

Ted
’s mouth opened like a fish and closed without sound. CJ beamed at him.

‘I think I have the perfect example for you,
Ted. It will involve some travel, but you will see first hand how we start up an operation in the villages. Do you mind taking a longish trip? It might not be very comfortable.’

Ted
wanted to say that of course he minded, especially if a local was suggesting that accommodation on the trip might fall some way short of five stars. Ted’s imagination filled with large bugs, rivers of sweat, zero sanitation and rare bowel disorders. It was likely to be as close to purgatory as made no difference. He was glad he’d secreted a couple of bottles of Old Tennessee in his bag for just such an emergency. One bit of luck was that Erin wouldn’t be joining him; it meant he could suffer out loud and have a drink without the air frosting around him.

‘No problem, CJ.’

‘Good. Good! Then I will make the preparations. Tomorrow I will send one of my new district managers with you. She is opening up a new district for us. She is specifically following up a small loan we made just a few weeks ago. The loan was to three women who made their way here to Delhi from their village in Madya Pradesh. A five day round trip to open a bank account. Remarkable really. It shows they are the right sort of customer, don’t you think? And now we need to give them local support. So early tomorrow we will send you off to Chandapur.’

A
nila found herself shouting at Mr Chowdury in front of a large crowd. They were standing next to Mr Roy’s truck. The money lender was dressed in his usual humble garb like the toilers in the field: a simple tunic top, a loin cloth, bare feet and a turban. He clung to a tall pole with both hands, one leg curled round it. From time to time he unwrapped himself and brandished the pole to underline his gestures or to threaten this upstart woman who was holding forth.

‘This is your own fault Mr Chowdury! You have brought this on your own head! All I wanted was to buy my wood direct from Mr Roy and you would not let me. You wanted to hold onto the market did you not? That is why I have had to make a cooperative with my friends. That is why we have bought all the wood.’

‘You are killing my business! You are killing me! My family will starve and it will be because of you and your fancy ways. This is no work for a woman. A cooperative! What is that, I wonder?! I will tell you what it is. It is a silly notion by silly women who know nothing about business and you will all rue this day!’

The money lender was stamping on the ground and shaking his fist at Anila. His face was contorted with anger and frustration. How dare these women! Mr Roy was standing well clear. He had the 600 Rupees from Anila and wished the whole messy business would go away. Life was fine until yesterday. He didn’t care who won as long as he kept getting a good price for his wood. He was keen to off-load his present bundle and be on his way, but a couple of Mr Chowdury’s men were standing looking menacingly at him from a position in front of his truck. He didn’t have a reverse gear.

The crowd was enjoying this, and in its way its sympathies lay with Anila. Most of the women she’d co-opted yesterday were there but not saying much, waiting for Anila to win or lose. A few called out support, including Sandip, who’d tipped the balance of the argument yesterday.

‘She is right Mr Chowdury. This is all your own fault. Now we are all right behind Mrs Jhabvala here. Leave her alone and let us all get on with our business!’   

Leena could not contain herself either. ‘You have robbed us with your high interest for years Mr Chowdury. Now is your comeuppance!’

This stunned the crowd and the two protagonists at the centre. Leena wished her tongue back in her mouth and felt her face go hot.

Mr Chowdury drew himself erect on his pole.

‘So that is the way of it, is it?’
He filled with righteous wrath. ‘For years I have helped you all. I have beggared myself and my family to lend you money. When your crops failed, Mrs Arundati, whom did you turn to? And when your husband died and you needed a loan to pay for the funeral, Mrs Lal, where did you come to? What will you do now? Where will you go if you drive me out of business? I ask you this? Because if this - this cooperative - starts up, then I am finished with you.’

He stood looking round the circle seeing the doubts in faces, feeling the mood changing his way. Anila sensed it too, felt her arguments fading, saw her little business idea evaporating like a puddle in the
dust. The demon stirred in her again.

‘If that is how it must be, then it must be Mr Chowdury. We will just have to go to the bank instead.’

He whipped round to her. ‘What bank?! What nonsense are you talking? There is no bank here.’ He was dismissive, derisive. ‘What bank would lend to people like you?’

‘The People’s Bank. That is who. You will see. They will come here and offer us loans at good rates. They will
not make our lives impossible.’

As she said this,
Anila kept her mind on CJ Kapoor. She trusted the man who’d let her and her friends into the head office of the bank in New Delhi and arranged the loan. He would not, must not let her down.

‘Hah, the People’s Bank! I have heard of them. They are snaring gullible people like you with cheap loans and then waiting to catch you. When you cannot go anywhere else then they put their rates up and up. And they make people sell their homes and their animals and their children to pay off the debts!’ He pointed tellingly at the children hanging from their mothers in the front row. They pulled back behind their mothers’ saris, terrified at this prophecy. ‘They are grabbing land and taking over the country, that is your People’s Bank!’

He strutted up and down now using his pole like a marching stick. His chest was puffed out and his gnarled legs stamped the ground like mistimed pistons. ‘And where are they? Where are these bank managers who work in the fields? When will we see them?’

‘Soon. You will see them soon. And then we will all see, won’t we?’ Anila challenged him.

He stopped and turned to her. A look of calculation seized his face. ‘If this is how it is to go, I want my money now. I am owed three days’ money from the members of your wonderful cooperative. If you are breaking your deal, then I want it paid back now. With all due interest. I am within my rights.’