The Dead Ram
It was July 2017. The air was pregnant with moisture but rain was nowhere in sight. Four weeks had passed, since the police first came to look for Ram; for he had defaulted on a 10 lakh Rupee loan with GrowMore Finance — a non-banking-finance-company and they had lodged a criminal case against him. Every week, the Thanedar left with five thousand Rupees for giving him extra time to pay up and avoid getting locked up in the cell.
An economic migrant from a nearby village — one of the millions who make such journeys to the promise of city life every year, he had settled on the outskirts — where other people like him lived — in what are described as illegal colonies. Yet he was unlike them. He had earned himself a diploma in mechanical engineering from an industrial institute before finding a job with a large telecom contractor that farmed out work to people like him — time and labour suppliers. Laying telephone cable for instance — he was paid only for the cable laid — Rs 100 per km. Margins were low but work was enough. Over six years, he had not only added two employees in his team but also brought his wife and his daughter to the city to stay with him.
In 2011, when Ram earned his first contract, the telecom business was fast expanding. Everyone wanted a telephone and a reliable connection. Networks were chocked; creating a demand for permanent expansion. Skills were in short supply. This is where Ram fitted in. He had the skill and the energy and enthusiasm of an ambitious man.
There were challenges though. Some inflicted by the God himself. During monsoons and when it was extremely hot in summers and when it was unbearably cold in winters — cable laying was made impossible — he earned nothing. Also when the teacher went on strike for higher wages despite not showing up for work and also when rich university students and middle class call centre workers blocked the streets protesting police inaction against gang rapes and also the lawyers agitation for something that most people neither understood nor cared. On such occasions, he was not sure if his sympathies laid with the raped innocent girls or with the powerlessness of the city to do nothing but deprive many like him — the means of their subsistence.
Then an opportunity came his way — a small but a long and lucrative contract for cable laying in an entire circle. But there was an obstacle; submission of a guarantee to the telephone company — a percentage of the work awarded. Banks in India are notorious for not giving loans or other facilities to migrant workers and to the poor in general — afraid they would run away despite a history of rich borrowers absconding and the poor ones hanging themselves on trees. His problem was however resolved by the GrowMore broker who introduced him to the possibility of an unsecured loan. The interest rate was inhuman but the amounts processed quickly enough to appeal to people with urgent needs and small expansive dreams — the rickshaw drivers, roadside vendors and cobblers and fruit sellers and those who got turned away at the Bank counter — which was pretty much everyone in his locality. In time work grew. He moved to a better house, got his wife a wedding gift and sent his daughter to school. Ram was doing well — I thought.
By 2017 the telecom sector was still expanding but savage competition prevailed. Contractor payments were routinely delayed. Several went out of business unable to sustain. Ram stayed on. GrowMore Finance had continued to finance him until it reached 10 Lakhs when his time came to default.
Then one day, towards the end of the year, I learnt that Ram had locked himself and his wife and his daughter in his house and set it to fire. The telephone company was experiencing financial difficulties and was unable to make payments in time — actually a long time now. The Thanedar had not stopped visiting him. GrowMore was becoming impatient. It was planning an IPO — investor appetite for financial services firms was strong. More and more money was possible to be raised. Its CEO a graduate from Delhi University and a foreign MBA had appeared in several magazines and newspapers underlining the social impact of his business — particularly amongst small enterprises and those left out of organised banking. A short film made by a multinational advertising company aggressively displayed interviews with small borrowers highlighting transformative effect GrowMore lending had made in their life. Ram had appeared in it.
The monsoons were over. It was not yet cold. Winters were still away. Nirav Modi was running his multi billion dollar jewellery business on fraudulent loans although many other companies were beginning to default. I received a call from Ram’s brother, a farmer, informing me of his suicide and death. There is an amount of 10 Lakhs he said that he had organised to pay GrowMore — the dues that his brother had left and wanted my help in tracing their whereabouts. He had sold his land.
Early 2018, markets are up. Sensex is at 36,000. GrowMore had a successful IPO. Its price is up. I had bought some shares too. The telephone company has been merged. Banks have taken a hair cut. Government has intervened. The new owner is a rich man.
Ram is dead.
Millions of people like him who migrate to cities every year put their dreams and themselves to death. Those who do not die — live to sustain a society and an economic system that is engineered to deprive them of a fair reward for their labor or sometime suck it outrightly and completely and then smartly pool it and push it upwards to the benefit of the rich above. And preventing it from being revealed — in the process contributing to the building of an illusion — a false hope — that change is possible and within reach — the narrative of a nation on the move — progress and the lifting boat they can get onboard. The very illusion that attracts more people like Ram to cities. To sometime live and mostly to die
