Page 64 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

16. Pocketing the loan amount of

the poor

I t was the day for visiting the field with the Loan Officer at this

branch. The purpose was to do follow up for recovery of loans. We
took the list of borrowers in a particular cluster and sets of balance
confirmation forms for obtaining acknowledgement of debt from
borrowers we would meet. We had to obtain letters for their
commitment to repay in case they wanted an extended schedule of
repayment. The printed blank receipt forms were also carried for
accepting part cash payments if offered by the borrowers.

We reached our first stop, a village near banks of Yamuna River that fell
in Service Area of our branch and earlier Branch Managers had financed
in this area. We were new to these customers and also the service area
and had to navigate the area by asking directions and identity of people
from many persons on the way.

On our asking about one borrower, some other villager from the
neighborhood pointed that there was the person we were looking for.
We found one person smoking a "hookah" (a local instrument for
smoking tobacco) while sitting under the roof of his old hut. He must be
above 60 years. Our Loan Officer set out towards him very fast and
slapped him hard saying, "Why you are not repaying the loan taken from
a Govt. bank? How did you think that you would not have to repay it?
You would take money and forget and we would be searching for you
and running after you in village streets like this?"

Loan Officer was about to slap him once more when I intervened and
stopped him. I asked him to first listen to what he has to say about the

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