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The Guardian
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Malala and Kiran faced violence, threats and shame. Now their fathers want ‘all men to stand with women'
The day Ranjit's daughter was born, he distributed sweets to the entire village – not just because he was thrilled to be a father for the first time, but because he was father to a girl. 'God heard my heart and granted my wish,' he says. His devotion to baby Kiran* was immediate and unshakeable. He would rush home from his work in the fields to spend time caring for her. Millions of fathers around the world will relate to the joy Ranjit felt, but in deeply patriarchal rural India publicly celebrating the arrival of a girl is an unusual, even defiant, act. Ranjit's love for and faith in Kiran is captured in the film To Kill A Tiger, which follows the poor rice farmer as he pursues justice for his daughter after she was gang-raped aged 13. Kiran is determined to see her attackers in court and Ranjit is determined to support her. Quietly but doggedly, he refuses to give up even in the face of threats and ostracism from his community. He credits Kiran and his wife, Jaganti, for giving him the strength to keep going. After a screening of the film this year in New York, Ranjit and Kiran were joined by another supporter of an extraordinary daughter: Ziauddin Yousafzai, better known as Malala's father. The screening was used to launch #StandWithHer, a global gender-justice campaign to support survivors of sexual violence. At the time, Yousafzai spoke of Ranjit as 'a man all men should be proud of – the father all fathers should look up to'. On Sunday, a short film will be released of the two men in conversation, discussing fatherhood, courage and their commitment to seeing their daughters become independent young women despite the social and political barriers they face. Nisha Pahuja, To Kill A Tiger's director and founder of #StandWithHer, says the film marks the start of a wider drive to invite men and boys to discuss the ways patriarchy limits both sexes. 'Power comes at a cost – not just to women and girls, but also, to men and boys,' says Pahuja. 'There is of course no denying the obvious, material benefits of this power imbalance or the violence it has permitted, but there's also no denying the suffering of men and boys. 'It's so clear today that men and boys are struggling to define themselves. I do feel Zia and Ranjit are powerful, unapologetic role models here.' Yousafzai describes how Malala was named after a 19th-century Afghan heroine 'because there was power in this name'. He says he knew it would suit her. 'In my mind, I associated a girl with strength, and I thought if I had a daughter she will be strong; she will have her own voice and she will be known by her name.' Yousafzai was adamant his daughter would be educated – something his own mother and five sisters had been denied. 'Education was the front door and it had to stay open,' he tells Ranjit. He recalls how he used to invite Malala to join discussions and debates with friends at home because he recognised that she had a great mind and always had something to contribute. Malala, he says, was not just a daughter but a 'comrade and a friend', so when, in 2012, she was shot in the head by the Taliban for standing up for her right to go to school, losing her was unthinkable. When she survived the attack and became a global advocate for education, Yousafzai campaigned alongside her. They are 'one soul in two bodies', he says. His nickname for her, Jaani, means soulmate. After Kiran was assaulted, Ranjit was expected to marry her off to one of her attackers – a common response to sexual violence that insists women and girls can only rid themselves of shame by becoming wives. Ranjit and Kiran refused to accept that shame and instead placed it squarely on the perpetrators. 'A real, caring father puts his daughter first,' he says. Yousafzai says he sees Malala in Kiran. 'It is as if Malala appears in front of me. Her voice will be a step against extremism, a step against violence; it already is.' The campaign, he adds, will spread the message that men should be allies, using their privilege to challenge long-held beliefs. 'Every father, every brother: all men must stand with women.' Resistance and change start at home, he says. 'This institution of the family is an agent of change, an informal one … there's no force more powerful than the family.' Ranjit agrees. 'We can convince men; it needs to enter their minds. As more and more people come together, I feel it will definitely have an impact on men and boys.' * Kiran is a pseudonym
Al Jazeera
10-06-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
‘Breaks your dignity': India's farm credit lifeline turns into debt trap
Meerut, India – The last of the paint had begun to peel off Mohammad Mohsin's house two years ago. The faded green, white and yellow paints on the walls still bore stains from last year's monsoons. A narrow, 3-foot-tall (0.9 metres) passage only possible to enter by crouching, led from the kitchen into a courtyard lined with buffalo dung, a rusting scooter, and a creaking cot in northern India's Meerut district, about 100km (62 miles) from New Delhi. 'We will get the house painted when it's finally wedding time,' Mohsin had said, leaning on an iron shovel, when Al Jazeera visited him in February earlier this year, referring to his sister Aman's wedding plans. But the date for the wedding came and went – without it being solemnised. In 2023, Mohsin had borrowed roughly $1,440 under the Indian government's Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme. 'Kisan' means 'farmer' in Hindi. Launched in 1998, the KCC initiative is intended to modernise rural credit by providing accessible, short-term, low-interest credit to farmers for agricultural expenses, thereby replacing exploitative private moneylenders. Issued against land holdings, the KCC operates like a revolving credit line, allowing farmers to borrow at the start of a crop cycle and repay after the harvest. With a modest interest rate of 4 percent annually, the scheme is among the most accessible financial instruments for millions of farmers. But for years now, the KCC scheme has deviated from its original purpose. Farmers in rural India, where agriculture barely sustains families and where dowry in marriages is the norm, have used KCC loans as a convenient but dangerous alternative to family income. The KCC money Mohsin borrowed in 2023 from a state-run bank's local branch was not meant to sow sugarcane or buy fertiliser. He always meant to use it for his sister's dowry: Aman's prospective in-laws had demanded a Maruti Wagon-R car, a larger Mahindra Scorpio SUV, and hundreds of thousands of rupees in cash, when the marriage was planned. KCC looks and can be used like a regular credit card, including for cash withdrawals. Clutching the family's KCC card issued in his father Mohammad Kamil's name, Mohsin withdrew the money from an ATM and went straight to a car dealer in Meerut to make the down payment for a Wagon R car. In February 2025, Aman's proposed marriage collapsed under a new set of dowry demands. By now, Mohsin was already in significant debt and had no money to sow crops, or invest in seeds or farm machinery. He was also saddled with the car he had bought for the groom. He missed paying the monthly instalments a few times. When farmers fail to repay during a crop cycle, the interest rate jumps from 4 percent to 7 percent, which is what happened with Mohsin. He now repays the loan in small instalments, but knows that he will be playing catchup for years. And the longer he delays his payments, the higher the risk that the loan could be classified as a non-performing asset (NPA), damaging his credit rating and future borrowing capacity. Meanwhile, 22-year-old Aman finished Fazilat, a seven-year course in Islamic theology offered by Darul Uloom, a prominent Muslim seminary in Deoband, about 80km (50 miles) from Meerut. The course is considered the equivalent of a bachelor's degree from a regular college. Aman's family has also resumed its search for another groom. 'I will get married when the right family agrees,' Aman told Al Jazeera. But families do not just agree. They negotiate – and dowry is the currency. Tens of thousands of Indian women have been killed by their in-laws over dowry demands. In 2024 alone, India saw a dowry-related death every 30 hours, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. 'In our part of the world, no dowry means no groom,' Aman's 60-year-old mother, Amina Begum, told Al Jazeera, sitting in one of the corners of their sparse home. Once a groom is finalised and the new dowry demands are negotiated, Mohsin will need cash again. And he may have to rely on the KCC scheme, again. But a new KCC loan cannot be sanctioned until the previous one is fully repaid. The only way around this involves local middlemen who help farmers repay the interest on existing KCC loans, and get the principal renewed in the bank as a fresh loan. In exchange, these middlemen charge an interest rate as high as between 2 and 5 percent per day. The result: If Mohsin gets another KCC loan sanctioned, he will need to use that to also repay the middlemen who helped him get it – perpetuating the cycle of indebtedness he is trapped in. India's farmers receive limited state support for unexpected or heavy personal expenses, such as hospital bills, children's education, social obligations, or even weddings – often forcing them to rely on informal credit or agricultural loans meant for farming needs. For instance, India's public healthcare spending is among the lowest globally, consistently under 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The limited resources put a significant strain on poor families in cases of medical emergencies. As a result, across India's agrarian belt, mainly in the north, the KCC scheme is being drained to plug life's emergencies, exposing a deep rural distress. A farmers' union leader and a politburo member of the Communist Party of India, Vijoo Krishnan, says that in addition to weddings, farmers are increasingly using KCC loans for healthcare and education. This diversion of money leads to what Krishnan calls a 'development debt trap', where farmers are forced to take on loans just to meet basic survival needs, rather than to invest in productivity or growth. A 2024 study published in The Pharma Innovation Journal, an Indian interdisciplinary publication that also features research in agriculture and rural development, found that only a fraction of KCC loans go towards agriculture. About 28 percent of the KCC-holding farmers who were respondents in the study said they used the fund for household needs, 22 percent for medical expenses, 14 percent for children's education, and nearly 10 percent for marriage-related expenses. 'Farming barely pays enough to sustain a family,' said Mohammad Mehraj, the former head of Mohsin's Muslim-majority village of Kaili Kapsadh. 'If there's a medical emergency or a wedding, the pressure is too much.' The fear of repayment haunts farmers, rooted in the deep shame that failure brings. Everyone has heard the stories. 'In a nearby village, a man in his forties was declared a defaulter. His name was read out in the village square. The shame was so unbearable that his wife moved back to her parents' home,' Mohsin recalled. The man in question, he says, has not been seen since. No one knows if he fled, or if he is even alive. Mohsin lives with the same fear. 'The system doesn't break down your door, it breaks your dignity,' he said. In small villages with close-knit communities, a bank official's visit to the house to seek repayment of loans is seen as an embarrassment to be avoided at all costs. 'I'd rather starve than have a bank man knock on our door,' said Mohsin's father, Kamil, who is in his 70s, his voice barely above a whisper. Around him, others nodded in agreement. To escape shame, farmers like Mohsin rely on the middlemen who charge a steep interest rate to help them renew KCC loans without settling the principal. Thomas Franco, a former general secretary of the All India Bank Officers' Federation, said that while schemes like KCC have expanded credit access for farmers, they have also created a debt trap. 'At the harvest time, many farmers, already burdened with earlier debts, are forced to take additional loans. Loans intended for productivity often get diverted to meet immediate social obligations,' he told Al Jazeera. By 2024, the Indian government's official data shows that the KCC scheme had disbursed more than $120bn to farmers, a sharp rise from $51bn in 2014. But those numbers mask a more complex reality in which banks become a part of the serial indebtedness crisis, while showcasing high numbers of loan disbursals, Franco said. 'The loans get renewed every year without actual repayment, and in the bank's books, it shows as a fresh disbursal, even though the farmer does not get the actual funds. This exaggerates the success numbers,' he said. Meanwhile, as India's farmers find themselves buried in mountains of debt, many are taking their own lives. In 2023, Maharashtra, India's richest state, contributing about 13 percent to the country's GDP, reported the highest number of farmer suicides – at 2,851. This year, Maharashtra's Marathwada region is one of the worst hit. In the first three months of 2025 alone, the region recorded 269 suicides, marking a 32 percent increase from the same period in 2024. In neighbouring Karnataka, between April 2023 and July 2024, 1,182 farmers died by suicide, primarily due to severe drought, crop loss and overwhelming debt. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, farmer suicides rose by 42 percent in 2022, compared with the previous year. Similarly, Haryana, also in the north, reported 266 farm suicides in 2022, up 18 percent from 225 in 2021. Critics argue that without deep structural reforms aimed at providing better public welfare systems for farmers and their families, such as affordable healthcare, quality education, and reforms to make farming profitable, schemes like the KCC will remain short-term solutions. Jayati Ghosh, a leading development economist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said that India's agricultural credit system is fundamentally out of sync with how farming works. 'Crop loans are typically structured for a single season, but farmers often need to borrow well before sowing, and can only repay after harvesting and selling. Forcing repayment within that narrow window is unrealistic and harmful, especially when farmers lack the support to store crops and wait for better prices,' she said. Ghosh, who co-authored a 2021 policy report for the Andhra Pradesh government and has studied agrarian distress for more than three decades, told Al Jazeera that key Indian financial institutions – the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank and NABARD, the apex rural development bank – were to blame for treating agriculture like any other commercial enterprise. 'The failure lies with NABARD, the RBI and successive governments. Agricultural lending needs to be subsidised, decentralised and designed around real conditions in the field,' she said. Schemes like the KCC, she said, are built on the flawed belief that cash alone can solve rural distress. 'We've built a credit system assuming farmers just need money. But without investment in irrigation, land security, local crop research, storage and market access, loans won't solve the crisis,' she said. The KCC scheme has also been riddled with controversies, with multiple loan scams surfacing across India in recent years. In Kaithal, a town in northern Haryana state, six farmers used forged documents to secure nearly $88,000 in loans, which ballooned to $110,000 before detection, due to accrued interest over time after the farmers failed to repay them. In the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, agricultural dealer Mohammad Furkan, in collusion with a bank manager, created fake bills and ghost loans worth $1.2m in 2014, earning him a three-year sentence in March 2023. In Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state where Meerut is located, three State Bank of India managers sanctioned about $792,000 in fraudulent KCC loans between 2014 and 2017, using forged land records and fake documents. The federal Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) booked them in January 2020 after an internal bank inquiry. The matter is still being probed. Yet, bank officials say that despite years of scams and red flags, the KCC scheme continues to suffer from weak oversight. 'There's no systemic check in place,' said a loan disbursal agent affiliated with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), who has been processing KCC applications in rural Uttar Pradesh for more than a decade. He spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, as he is not authorised to speak to the media. But even if the KCC was cleaned up and all scammers punished, it would not solve the problem, say some farmer leaders. 'This is not about debt. It's about dignity,' said Dharmendra Malik, the national spokesperson of the Indian Farmers' Union, a prominent group. 'You can't solve agrarian distress with easy loans. You need investment in irrigation, storage, education and guaranteed prices for the crops.' Back in Kaili Kapsadh, Mohsin's buffalo stood tethered in the courtyard, swatting flies with its tail. It is worth $960 and, in this village, that is a status symbol, akin to owning a vintage car in a wealthy urban suburb. But prestige does not pay back loans. Mohsin has not been able to renew his family's KCC loan, worth about $1,500, for more than two years. He is still repaying the last one. Each harvest yields the same bitter crop for him: more bills and losses. Looking at his sugarcane fields, already browning under a harsh sun, he said: 'Sometimes I wonder if farming even has a future.' If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.
Al Jazeera
10-06-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
How a credit lifeline for India's farmers has turned into a debt trap
Meerut, India – The last of the paint had begun to peel off Mohammad Mohsin's house two years ago. The faded green, white and yellow paints on the walls still bore stains from last year's monsoons. A narrow, 3-foot-tall (0.9 metres) passage only possible to enter by crouching, led from the kitchen into a courtyard lined with buffalo dung, a rusting scooter, and a creaking cot in northern India's Meerut district, about 100km (62 miles) from New Delhi. 'We will get the house painted when it's finally wedding time,' Mohsin had said, leaning on an iron shovel, when Al Jazeera visited him in February earlier this year, referring to his sister Aman's wedding plans. But the date for the wedding came and went – without it being solemnised. In 2023, Mohsin had borrowed roughly $1,440 under the Indian government's Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme. 'Kisan' means 'farmer' in Hindi. Launched in 1998, the KCC initiative is intended to modernise rural credit by providing accessible, short-term, low-interest credit to farmers for agricultural expenses, thereby replacing exploitative private moneylenders. Issued against land holdings, the KCC operates like a revolving credit line, allowing farmers to borrow at the start of a crop cycle and repay after the harvest. With a modest interest rate of 4 percent annually, the scheme is among the most accessible financial instruments for millions of farmers. But for years now, the KCC scheme has deviated from its original purpose. Farmers in rural India, where agriculture barely sustains families and where dowry in marriages is the norm, have used KCC loans as a convenient but dangerous alternative to family income. The KCC money Mohsin borrowed in 2023 from a state-run bank's local branch was not meant to sow sugarcane or buy fertiliser. He always meant to use it for his sister's dowry: Aman's prospective in-laws had demanded a Maruti Wagon-R car, a larger Mahindra Scorpio SUV, and hundreds of thousands of rupees in cash, when the marriage was planned. KCC looks and can be used like a regular credit card, including for cash withdrawals. Clutching the family's KCC card issued in his father Mohammad Kamil's name, Mohsin withdrew the money from an ATM and went straight to a car dealer in Meerut to make the down payment for a Wagon R car. In February 2025, Aman's proposed marriage collapsed under a new set of dowry demands. By now, Mohsin was already in significant debt and had no money to sow crops, or invest in seeds or farm machinery. He was also saddled with the car he had bought for the groom. He missed paying the monthly instalments a few times. When farmers fail to repay during a crop cycle, the interest rate jumps from 4 percent to 7 percent, which is what happened with Mohsin. He now repays the loan in small instalments, but knows that he will be playing catchup for years. And the longer he delays his payments, the higher the risk that the loan could be classified as a non-performing asset (NPA), damaging his credit rating and future borrowing capacity. Meanwhile, 22-year-old Aman finished Fazilat, a seven-year course in Islamic theology offered by Darul Uloom, a prominent Muslim seminary in Deoband, about 80km (50 miles) from Meerut. The course is considered the equivalent of a bachelor's degree from a regular college. Aman's family has also resumed its search for another groom. 'I will get married when the right family agrees,' Aman told Al Jazeera. But families do not just agree. They negotiate – and dowry is the currency. Tens of thousands of Indian women have been killed by their in-laws over dowry demands. In 2024 alone, India saw a dowry-related death every 30 hours, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. 'In our part of the world, no dowry means no groom,' Aman's 60-year-old mother, Amina Begum, told Al Jazeera, sitting in one of the corners of their sparse home. Once a groom is finalised and the new dowry demands are negotiated, Mohsin will need cash again. And he may have to rely on the KCC scheme, again. But a new KCC loan cannot be sanctioned until the previous one is fully repaid. The only way around this involves local middlemen who help farmers repay the interest on existing KCC loans, and get the principal renewed in the bank as a fresh loan. In exchange, these middlemen charge an interest rate as high as between 2 and 5 percent per day. The result: If Mohsin gets another KCC loan sanctioned, he will need to use that to also repay the middlemen who helped him get it – perpetuating the cycle of indebtedness he is trapped in. India's farmers receive limited state support for unexpected or heavy personal expenses, such as hospital bills, children's education, social obligations, or even weddings – often forcing them to rely on informal credit or agricultural loans meant for farming needs. For instance, India's public healthcare spending is among the lowest globally, consistently under 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The limited resources put a significant strain on poor families in cases of medical emergencies. As a result, across India's agrarian belt, mainly in the north, the KCC scheme is being drained to plug life's emergencies, exposing a deep rural distress. A farmers' union leader and a politburo member of the Communist Party of India, Vijoo Krishnan, says that in addition to weddings, farmers are increasingly using KCC loans for healthcare and education. This diversion of money leads to what Krishnan calls a 'development debt trap', where farmers are forced to take on loans just to meet basic survival needs, rather than to invest in productivity or growth. A 2024 study published in The Pharma Innovation Journal, an Indian interdisciplinary publication that also features research in agriculture and rural development, found that only a fraction of KCC loans go towards agriculture. About 28 percent of the KCC-holding farmers who were respondents in the study said they used the fund for household needs, 22 percent for medical expenses, 14 percent for children's education, and nearly 10 percent for marriage-related expenses. 'Farming barely pays enough to sustain a family,' said Mohammad Mehraj, the former head of Mohsin's Muslim-majority village of Kaili Kapsadh. 'If there's a medical emergency or a wedding, the pressure is too much.' The fear of repayment haunts farmers, rooted in the deep shame that failure brings. Everyone has heard the stories. 'In a nearby village, a man in his forties was declared a defaulter. His name was read out in the village square. The shame was so unbearable that his wife moved back to her parents' home,' Mohsin recalled. The man in question, he says, has not been seen since. No one knows if he fled, or if he is even alive. Mohsin lives with the same fear. 'The system doesn't break down your door, it breaks your dignity,' he said. In small villages with close-knit communities, a bank official's visit to the house to seek repayment of loans is seen as an embarrassment to be avoided at all costs. 'I'd rather starve than have a bank man knock on our door,' said Mohsin's father, Kamil, who is in his 70s, his voice barely above a whisper. Around him, others nodded in agreement. To escape shame, farmers like Mohsin rely on the middlemen who charge a steep interest rate to help them renew KCC loans without settling the principal. Thomas Franco, a former general secretary of the All India Bank Officers' Federation, said that while schemes like KCC have expanded credit access for farmers, they have also created a debt trap. 'At the harvest time, many farmers, already burdened with earlier debts, are forced to take additional loans. Loans intended for productivity often get diverted to meet immediate social obligations,' he told Al Jazeera. By 2024, the Indian government's official data shows that the KCC scheme had disbursed more than $120bn to farmers, a sharp rise from $51bn in 2014. But those numbers mask a more complex reality in which banks become a part of the serial indebtedness crisis, while showcasing high numbers of loan disbursals, Franco said. 'The loans get renewed every year without actual repayment, and in the bank's books, it shows as a fresh disbursal, even though the farmer does not get the actual funds. This exaggerates the success numbers,' he said. Meanwhile, as India's farmers find themselves buried in mountains of debt, many are taking their own lives. In 2023, Maharashtra, India's richest state, contributing about 13 percent to the country's GDP, reported the highest number of farmer suicides – at 2,851. This year, Maharashtra's Marathwada region is one of the worst hit. In the first three months of 2025 alone, the region recorded 269 suicides, marking a 32 percent increase from the same period in 2024. In neighbouring Karnataka, between April 2023 and July 2024, 1,182 farmers died by suicide, primarily due to severe drought, crop loss and overwhelming debt. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, farmer suicides rose by 42 percent in 2022, compared with the previous year. Similarly, Haryana, also in the north, reported 266 farm suicides in 2022, up 18 percent from 225 in 2021. Critics argue that without deep structural reforms aimed at providing better public welfare systems for farmers and their families, such as affordable healthcare, quality education, and reforms to make farming profitable, schemes like the KCC will remain short-term solutions. Jayati Ghosh, a leading development economist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said that India's agricultural credit system is fundamentally out of sync with how farming works. 'Crop loans are typically structured for a single season, but farmers often need to borrow well before sowing, and can only repay after harvesting and selling. Forcing repayment within that narrow window is unrealistic and harmful, especially when farmers lack the support to store crops and wait for better prices,' she said. Ghosh, who co-authored a 2021 policy report for the Andhra Pradesh government and has studied agrarian distress for more than three decades, told Al Jazeera that key Indian financial institutions – the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank and NABARD, the apex rural development bank – were to blame for treating agriculture like any other commercial enterprise. 'The failure lies with NABARD, the RBI and successive governments. Agricultural lending needs to be subsidised, decentralised and designed around real conditions in the field,' she said. Schemes like the KCC, she said, are built on the flawed belief that cash alone can solve rural distress. 'We've built a credit system assuming farmers just need money. But without investment in irrigation, land security, local crop research, storage and market access, loans won't solve the crisis,' she said. The KCC scheme has also been riddled with controversies, with multiple loan scams surfacing across India in recent years. In Kaithal, a town in northern Haryana state, six farmers used forged documents to secure nearly $88,000 in loans, which ballooned to $110,000 before detection, due to accrued interest over time after the farmers failed to repay them. In the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, agricultural dealer Mohammad Furkan, in collusion with a bank manager, created fake bills and ghost loans worth $1.2m in 2014, earning him a three-year sentence in March 2023. In Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state where Meerut is located, three State Bank of India managers sanctioned about $792,000 in fraudulent KCC loans between 2014 and 2017, using forged land records and fake documents. The federal Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) booked them in January 2020 after an internal bank inquiry. The matter is still being probed. Yet, bank officials say that despite years of scams and red flags, the KCC scheme continues to suffer from weak oversight. 'There's no systemic check in place,' said a loan disbursal agent affiliated with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), who has been processing KCC applications in rural Uttar Pradesh for more than a decade. He spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, as he is not authorised to speak to the media. But even if the KCC was cleaned up and all scammers punished, it would not solve the problem, say some farmer leaders. 'This is not about debt. It's about dignity,' said Dharmendra Malik, the national spokesperson of the Indian Farmers' Union, a prominent group. 'You can't solve agrarian distress with easy loans. You need investment in irrigation, storage, education and guaranteed prices for the crops.' Back in Kaili Kapsadh, Mohsin's buffalo stood tethered in the courtyard, swatting flies with its tail. It is worth $960 and, in this village, that is a status symbol, akin to owning a vintage car in a wealthy urban suburb. But prestige does not pay back loans. Mohsin has not been able to renew his family's KCC loan, worth about $1,500, for more than two years. He is still repaying the last one. Each harvest yields the same bitter crop for him: more bills and losses. Looking at his sugarcane fields, already browning under a harsh sun, he said: 'Sometimes I wonder if farming even has a future.' If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.
Finextra
02-06-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide: How Integrated Financial Platforms Are Driving Financial Inclusion: By Kunal Jhunjhunwala
India's digital economy has been nothing short of remarkable; UPI transactions crossed 16.99 billion in January 2025 alone, fintech startups are flourishing, and banking is now more mobile than ever. However, beyond the metros and Tier-1 cities, the picture is not quite as ideal. In India's rural and semi-urban pockets, millions still struggle with limited access to formal financial services, creating a digital divide that mirrors socio-economic inequalities. The real problem in these areas is that financial needs are rarely limited to just one service; they often span payments, savings, credit, and risk protection. Hence, a solution that has the combined ability to address all these needs through a single access point is required, removing the friction of fragmented services. This is where integrated financial platforms play a crucial role, working in the background and quietly reshaping the experience. They are bridging the gap between first-time access and long-term financial inclusion by making payments, banking, credit, and insurance available through a single, user-friendly interface. Power of Localized Solutions The need for integrated financial platforms in rural areas is critical, largely due to low digital literacy. While 40.2% of urban residents use online banking, only 21% in rural India do - revealing a gap that reflects not just digital access, but digital confidence. This digital divide is further deepened by the lack of nearby bank branches and unreliable internet connectivity, forcing people to travel long distances—often at a high cost of time and money, to access basic financial services. On top of that, language barriers make it even harder for many marginalized sectors to navigate and adopt digital tools, limiting their participation in the formal economy. Integrated platforms address these challenges using mobile-first technology and offline-to-online (O2O) models. Through smartphones and offline-compatible devices, users in remote regions can access essential financial services without the need to travel long distances to physical branches. Complementing this, these platforms have adopted multilingual interfaces and intuitive designs, offering easy-to-use apps in various regional languages. This enables users from diverse linguistic backgrounds to direct services easily and confidently. Furthermore, assisted commerce models have emerged as a key solution. Local agents, often community members themselves, guide users through digital transactions, helping them onboard despite limited technological experience. For example, integrated platforms often collaborate with Kirana stores and service agents who double as trusted financial facilitators. A customer visiting their neighborhood Kirana store for groceries can now also pay utility bills, withdraw cash, or explore credit options — all with real-time assistance from a trusted local agent. This hyperlocal model builds trust and integrates financial access into familiar, everyday routines, encouraging gradual and sustained digital adoption. In parallel, these platforms prioritize user security by providing transparent and easy-to-understand information about data protection practices. This clarity plays a vital role in fostering trust and encouraging participation among communities traditionally wary of digital systems. Plan In Action Integrated financial solutions are the silent architects of change in underserved communities, touching sectors like agriculture, entrepreneurship, and women's empowerment—each finding its own path to growth and inclusion. For example, local shop owners, tailors, or mechanics can now access formal credit without the traditional barriers of collateral or complicated paperwork. By creating digital profiles and submitting simplified applications, they can apply for small business loans through mobile-based services. This access to timely credit enables them to invest in inventory, expand their services, or hire additional help, sparking local economic growth. Similarly, smallholder farmers facing weather-related uncertainties and crop failure now have easier access to micro-insurance schemes. These can be enrolled directly via mobile phones or through nearby agents, ensuring they can recover quickly from natural setbacks. With this, rural women, especially those running home-based businesses or self-help groups, are also reaping the benefits of integrated financial services. With access to digital wallets, savings accounts, and secure payment systems available in regional languages, these women can easily receive payments, pay bills, and build credit histories. This newfound financial autonomy enables them to scale operations and invest in future growth. Look Out for Geographical Divide The gap in digital payment adoption is stark, only 16% of rural populations engage in digital payments, contrast to 46% in urban areas. This divide highlights the urgent need for strategic partnerships, policy reforms, and infrastructure investments to close the gap. Moreover, financial inclusion goes beyond account ownership; it provides pathways for individuals to actively engage in the formal economy. By aligning integrated platforms with government schemes, millions can gain access to essential financial services and find new growth opportunities. With technology as an enabler and the right partnerships in place, financial inclusion can evolve from a long-standing aspiration to a nationwide reality.
Entrepreneur
20-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
CureBay Raises USD 21 Mn Series B to Scale Rural Healthcare Delivery
The Series B round was led by Bertelsmann India Investments, with continued support from existing investors Elevar Equity and British International Investment. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. CureBay, a hybrid healthcare platform focused on rural India, has raised USD 21 million in a Series B funding round led by Bertelsmann India Investments. The round also saw participation from existing investors Elevar Equity and British International Investment. The capital will be deployed to strengthen CureBay's proprietary tech stack and fuel its expansion into new states such as Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. The company plans to invest in AI-driven platform upgrades, rural-first workflow automation tools, and proprietary algorithms that support predictive healthcare and operational efficiency. "We are focused on addressing healthcare access challenges in underserved regions," said Priyadarshi Mohapatra, Founder and CEO of CureBay. "The funding will support the next phase of our scale-up, including technology development, team building, and operational expansion." Founded in 2021 by Priyadarshi Mohapatra, Shobhan Mohapatra, and Sanjay Swain, CureBay was created to bridge the healthcare gap in rural India, where doctor access is limited, and hospital visits often lead to income loss and exploitation by healthcare brokers. "They get lured into clinics that promise quick treatment, pay money, and often get subpar care. That's the reason they avoid traveling for care," Mohapatra explained. To address this, CureBay provides concierge-style support for rural patients referred to tertiary hospitals. A dedicated assistant accompanies them—like a trusted family doctor—ensuring they receive the right treatment without confusion or exploitation. CureBay's hybrid model combines tech-enabled eClinics with a digital infrastructure that offers doctor consultations, diagnostics, pharmacy delivery, and referrals—all under one platform. Its unique "circle" clinic network is supported by integrated logistics, local diagnostics, and medical partnerships. "While most rural solutions remain fragmented, CureBay uniquely delivers the full continuum of care under one platform," said Pankaj Makkar, Managing Director, Bertelsmann India Investments. "This investment reflects our commitment to mission-driven companies transforming Bharat." CureBay operates over 150 eClinics across Odisha and Chhattisgarh, delivering affordable and accessible healthcare to rural households. Its preventive care program has 90,000 active members with a renewal rate exceeding 60%. The company reported that its Balasore and Puri circles have achieved operational profitability, showcasing the viability of its rural-first healthcare model.
