Click to play videoNaugachiya (Bihar): Twenty-two-year-old Mumtaz has been confined to her house for the last three months. She has no idea where her parents are, but she knows that they are hiding somewhere after they defaulted on a loan taken from a local private bank.
"My maternal uncle has gone to the village and there is no one to look for my parents," says she.
This is not the sort of private bank which you find in big cities - slick, hi-tech and with polite staff helping you at every stage. This is one is run by local goons and is called the gunda (gangster's) bank.
There are many families like Mumtaz's in the northern districts of Bihar - most of them small farmers - who are forced to take loans from gunda banks at very high rates.
These banks work under the shadow of the gun with no formal offices or branches, but they do have a structured system in place.
- Most of them use computers to maintain customers' accounts
- Borrowers are issued pass books and receipts on payment
- They have an armed team of goons to realise money from defaulters
And these teams use all methods at their disposal to collect their money.
Says a victim, "We were beaten up badly by these goons. They were trying to take my father to get his kidney removed so that they could sell it and get their money back, but he was rescued because some villagers happened to come and see what the commotion was all about."
The victim's daughter, Gudiya, adds, "These men threaten to kidnap young women."
But where do these lenders actually get the money from to operate?
A gunda bank operator was caught on camera saying, "We get the money to operate our banks from from extortion and kidnappings."
The state's police along with Central agencies had tried earlier to break this moneylending network operated by criminals, but to no effect. Today, these gunda banks blatantly advertise on FM radio and the Government says it has no information on these banks.
Says the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Naugachiya, "Lenders and borrowers keep the matter between themselves and the police are never informed. This makes it very difficult for us to investigate the matter."
People sitting in the power corridors love to believe that Bihar has changed, but for those at the receiving end of the system, the change is too slow to benefit the person at the bottommost tier of the society.
Unless that happens, gundas and their gunda banks will continue to thrive.
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