Patna: Mahanti Devi is inconsolable. It has been two months since her son Siyaram Sahu, a daily wage labourer died by suicide in the middle of an approximately 4mx3m room which served as his home and where he raised his family of four kids with his wife Titali Devi in Kab village, Paligunj circle, around 50 kilometres from Patna city.

Sahu’s family claims that he died because of the consistent pestering by the collection agent of the micro-finance company from whom Sahu’s wife took Rs 50,000 loan towards her daughter’s wedding. Now, approximately Rs 14,000 of this loan remains. 

Recalling the fateful day, Titali Devi and her two daughters narrated how the collection agent came in the dead of night and started harassing the family for re-payments. Unable to do anything, Titali Devi ventured outside to see if she could borrow money from any neighbour who might be awake.

Meanwhile, the collection agent continued to abuse the family and threaten Sahu of dire consequence. At some point, Sahu asked the collection agent if he is unable to pay should he die by suicide, to which the agent responded in affirmative, the family says, adding that Sahu died while the collection agent was sitting just outside the door to their huntment.

Breaking down in tears, Tittali Devi mentions that the collection agent – whose name she does not know – ran away when he saw her husband dying by suicide, during those last moments. By the time the neighbours and family returned Sahu had died. 

The ordeal of the family, however, did not end there. Its been two months since the suicide and neither have they been successful in extracting a copy of the post mortem report nor have they been able to file an FIR. Dainik Bhaskar Hindi is the only mainstream newspaper where the news was recorded as a footnote to the rally organised by the local MLA – Sandeep Singh – against micro-finance companies. 

The tragedy of Sahu’s death is not an aberration. It is a symptom of the deep structural violence embedded within Bihar’s micro-finance economy – an economy that has grown in the name of women’s empowerment but now thrives on cycles of coercion, humiliation, and debt entrapment. Over the last decade, Bihar has emerged as one of India’s leading micro-finance markets. Yet the very women who were to be lifted out of poverty are being crushed by the weight of interest payments, social pressure, and the state’s withdrawal from welfare provisioning.

The Nitish Kumar government has long projected itself as a champion of women’s advancement. Schemes such as Jeevika Project, Jeevika Didis network, and the Mukhyamantri Nari Shakti Yojana have been showcased as models of participatory development – bringing women into the fold of financial inclusion, entrepreneurship, and local governance. In practice, however, these programmes have served as conduits for integrating poor women into debt-based markets, while transferring the risks of welfare onto their shoulders. Through self-help groups (SHGs) and micro-finance linkages, women are being encouraged to borrow, invest, and repay – often without meaningful protection against income shocks, health crises, or exploitative intermediaries.

In the case of Sahu’s family, the lender’s harassment was not an isolated instance of misconduct but part of a normalised practice of coercive recovery. Collection agents, many operating on commission, routinely resort to threats, social shaming, and nocturnal visits. The Reserve Bank of India’s own reports have noted the absence of effective grievance redressal mechanisms and the lack of regulatory oversight for non-banking financial companies operating in semi-urban and rural Bihar. Yet, government rhetoric continues to celebrate micro-finance as a celebration of women’s economic agency — obscuring the fact that such “agency” often operates under the shadow of debt and predatory interest rates ranging from 29-50%.

The ruling NDA government while mobilising women’s collective to absorb fiscal austerity has diluted the demand for redistribution. Women are told that taking loans is a pathway to dignity, that thrift and repayment are virtues, and that entrepreneurship will liberate them from dependence. The Jeevika Didis themselves are tasked with facilitating loan recovery, managing credit cycles, and enforcing repayment discipline among their peers. In effect, they become the soft arm of the state’s neoliberal apparatus, internalising the logic of responsibility and repayment as a measure of empowerment. When the burden becomes unbearable, as in the case of Titali Devi and her husband, the state disappears – leaving only the rhetoric of resilience.

Also read: Micro Loans Are Driving an Already Forsaken Population Further Into Distress

This silence is not accidental. The micro-finance sector is politically embedded, sustained by a complex nexus of state endorsement, and private capital. While opposition leaders and women’s organisations periodically protest against coercive recovery practices, the state machinery treats these deaths as isolated tragedies rather than structural failures. The lack of FIRs, postmortem transparency, and media attention is itself a form of governance erasure – an erasure that ensures the continuation of debt-driven development.

If Bihar’s government is serious about protecting women, it must move beyond symbolism. It must recognise that the true measure of empowerment is not the number of women borrowers or SHGs, but the freedom from fear, harassment, and unpayable debt. What is needed is a re-politicisation of the development discourse – one that reclaims social welfare from the grip of micro-finance companies, restores accountability to state institutions, and affirms that dignity cannot be mortgaged for credit. 

Ritumbra Manuvie is an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen, where she teaches Human Rights Law, and Post-colonial Theory. Priti Hirawal is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Bihar.

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