Musahar Man Who Died in UP's Kushinagar Was Caught in a Microfinance Debt Trap

Kushinagar: Shailesh, a poor Musahar youth of the Jungle Khirkia village of Kushinagar district caught in the debt trap of microfinance companies passed away in suspicious circumstances on Tuesday (September 17).

His wife Mala had borrowed a loan of Rs 2.3 lakh from six different microfinance companies. He got into a brawl with a family from his village following a dispute over the loan. When his condition worsened, he was rushed to the district hospital, where he died.

When Shailesh’s body arrived in his village on September 19 after the post-mortem, villagers refused to cremate it and sat on a dharna. Shailesh’s last rites were performed when officials assured action against the culprits after four hours of dharna.

Padrauna Kotwali police has registered a case against four persons in this matter.

Shailesh’s death is an instance of an emerging social crisis where poor people in eastern Uttar Pradesh’s villages are finding themselves trapped in a vicious quagmire of debt owed to microfinance companies.

This is the third death in Kushinagar district in a year of people mired in the debt trap of microfinance companies.

Additionally, a poor family from Dasahwan village in the Dudhhi area of Kushinagar was forced to sell their child for Rs 20,000 after being entangled in a debt trap.

Thirty-five-year-old Shailesh lived in Jungle Khirkia village, six kilometres away from the Kushinagar district headquarters.

All Musahar residents of the village live in abject poverty and earn their living by working as labourers.

Six years ago, two Musahar brothers, Feku and Pappu, died of hunger and malnutrition-related disease in this village on September 13.

Musahar youth are now migrating to cities because they are unable to find work in the village.

Also read: Behind UP Couple Forced to Sell Son for Rs 20,000, an Inescapable Microfinance Debt Trap

Who are the Musahars?

There are about 100 tolas or localities of Musahars in Kushinagar district and their population is estimated to be one lakh.

Musahars are agricultural labourers. They do not own land for farming and mainly survive by doing labour work. Due to the increasing use of machines in farming, they find little work now. As a result, their condition is becoming pathetic.

Musahars are named so because they are believed to be rat-eaters (where moos stands for rat), but the fact is that they used to look for rat burrows in the fields in search of grains so that they could satisfy their hunger by picking grains collected by rats.

The death of Nagina Musahar due to hunger in October 2004 in the Doghra village in Kushinagar district became national news, which shifted the government’s attention towards the community. In the last two decades, their condition has improved a little bit thanks to various government schemes related to housing, drinking water, food grains, etc, but the livelihood crisis has deepened further.

Musahars fall under the Scheduled Caste category. The organisations working to uplift the community demand that they be categorised as a Scheduled Tribe.

Life of a labourer

Shailesh’s father Channar was also a labourer. He was allotted a house under a government scheme years ago, in which he lived with his wife and Shailesh. Shailesh’s parents have passed away and the house has become dilapidated in the absence of any maintenance work.

When he did not get work in the village and its adjoining areas, Shailesh moved to Bengaluru to work as a labourer. But he returned because his wife was left alone in the village. Six months ago, he again went away to work as a labourer, but when he did not get good wages, he returned to the village.

Mala, Shailesh’s wife, has a two-year-old son and is currently seven months pregnant. Shailesh had sent Mala to her maternal home a month ago as he wanted to go out to work as a labourer again.

Loan totalling Rs 2.3 lakh from six microfinance companies

Shailesh and Mala were living in extreme poverty and found it difficult to manage to have two meals a day. Meanwhile, Mala came in contact with a self-help group in the village and borrowed a loan amounting to Rs 2.3 lakh from six different microfinance companies.

To pay the instalment of one loan, another loan was borrowed, followed by a third. As a result, debt kept mounting and the couple got entrapped.

Mala said that she had taken two loans of Rs 30,000 each in addition to four loans of Rs 50,000, Rs 45,000, Rs 40,000 and Rs 35,000 from six microfinance companies. The instalments of three loans had to be paid every fortnight, one every week and two every month.

The instalment of all six loans amounted to Rs 9,000 per month. They had been unable to pay any instalment over the last four months.

In a last ditch effort to make the payment, they handed one of their Rs 30,000 loans to a person from the village who needed money for building his house. He had assured them that he would pay the instalments. But the person failed to deposit the instalments, following which the microfinance company agents started harassing Shailesh because the loan had been borrowed in his name.

Mala’s sister-in-law Meera Devi told The Wire, “The entire village is stuck in debt. No one has any agricultural land. There is no work either. The loan is also such that one keeps paying the instalments but it does not get repaid. The agents barge into anyone’s house for loan recovery. People are fleeing the village and wandering here and there.”

Stall sold to recover the loan, sewing machine seized

Meera said that Shailesh had set up a stall in the village to sell vegetables and other daily essential items to earn money, but in vain. When he could not pay the loan instalment, an agent of a microfinance company got the stall sold and collected the instalment amount.

Mala had also tried to make a living by sewing clothes and had purchased a sewing machine. Over non-payment of the loan instalment, the microfinance company agent seized the sewing machine.

Meera said that Shailesh and Mala had paid only four or five instalments of all the loans. No instalment had been paid in the last four months. The agents of the microfinance company were constantly pressuring him to pay the instalment.

Dispute over the loan and the ensuing fight

According to Meera, Shailesh started demanding money back from the family to whom he had lent it so that he could get some relief. But the family did not pay the money, and fights over it had occurred continuously over a couple days, she said.

On September 17, Shailesh again went to ask for money in the afternoon and entered into a brawl with the family members, Meera said. Following the fight, he returned home and lay down on a cot, she added.

Meera said she saw Shailesh groaning and when she asked him about it, Shailesh said he had been beaten up. According to her, Shailesh was flailing and asked to call his wife. She called Mala and asked her to return to the village.

Meera asked her fellow villagers to take Shailesh to the hospital, but no one came forward, fearing a police case.

Meanwhile, news of the fight had reached the Khirkia police station and police personnel arrived. They called an ambulance and rushed Shailesh to the district hospital.

Mala said she reached the district hospital at 7 pm. A doctor was giving Shailesh an injection, shortly after which he died.

“I have been staying at my parents’ house for a month,” said Mala, crying. “He [Shailesh] said that at my parents’ house, I will be taken care of properly. He would then go and work as a labourer somewhere. I got a call that evening and rushed to the hospital. I only caught a glimpse of him before he passed away.”

Shailesh’s body was sent for post-mortem from the district hospital. When his body was brought to Jungle Khirkia on September 19 after the post-mortem, the people of the village sat on a dharna in front of his house with Mala. BJP leader Pappu Pandey also reached there and joined the dharna. 

The people of the village claimed that Shailesh died due to being beaten by agents of a microfinance company and that action should be taken by registering a case against the people who beat him. They also demanded that Musahars be saved from harassment by microfinance companies and all their loans should be waived off.

The protesters also asked for financial help to be given to the deceased’s family.

Raju, president of the Musahar Manch, a group working to uplift the Musahar community, submitted a memorandum to officials demanding the registration of an FIR against those who beat up Shailesh.

On receiving information about the protest, sub-divisional magistrate Vyas Narayan Umrao and Padrauna chief police officer Ashutosh Singh reached Jungle Khirkia village and assured action in the matter. After their assurance, Shailesh was cremated in the evening.

The Padrauna police have registered a case against four persons – Subhash Nishad, Mantu Nishad, Virendra and Uma Nishad – under sections 115(2), 352 and 105 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and section 3(2)(v) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 for causing hurt, intentional insult, culpable homicide and harassment of Dalits.

The post-mortem report says that no external injury marks were found on Shailesh’s body.

A police investigation will now reveal the actual reason behind Shailesh’s death, but the circumstances that were created by the debt trap of microfinance companies are undeniably a major player in causing his death.

A major question that now arises is, how will Mala raise her children on her own? Who will take responsibility for them?

This article was translated from the Hindi original by Naushin Rehman. Read the original here.