Debts to Death: How Microfinance Companies Are Crushing the Poor in Bihar Debts to Death: https://m.thewire.in/article/rights/debts-to-death-microfinance-menace-in-bihar 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..
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.
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.