{"id":72568,"date":"2021-04-14T22:35:52","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T03:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=72568"},"modified":"2021-04-14T22:35:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T03:35:52","slug":"no-new-year-for-women-satyagrahis-protesting-in-hinguragoda-over-failure-of-president-gotabaya-rajapaksa-to-implement-election-campaign-of-abolishing-microfinance-debts-and-setting-up-alternative-sou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=72568","title":{"rendered":"No New Year for Women Satyagrahis Protesting in Hinguragoda Over Failure of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to Implement Election Campaign of Abolishing Microfinance Debts and Setting up Alternative Sources of Credit"},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/p>\n

Meera Srinivasan<\/strong><\/p>\n

M. Champa Irangani is in no mood to celebrate \u2018Avurudu\u2019, or New Year, the biggest annual festival that Sri Lanka\u2019s majority Sinhalese community observes mid-April, while Tamils celebrate the Tamil New Year around the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe New Year will dawn only the day our debts are cancelled. Until then we cannot celebrate. Surely not, when so many women have died by suicide under the pressure of microfinance loans,\u201d she says, seated with dozens of affected women who have been observing a \u2018satyagraha\u2019 off the main road in Hingurakgoda town, in Sri Lanka\u2019s Polonnaruwa district, for a month now.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Seeking relief<\/strong><\/p>\n

They want their microfinance debt abolished, and an alternative source of credit that will free them from poverty, rather than worsen it. Their experience, shared by tens of thousands who have taken microfinance loans in Sri Lanka, not only counters popular claims in South Asia of microcredit alleviating poverty and empowering women, but also highlights the devastating consequences of the individualised, high-interest microfinance loans, entangling women in a pile of debt.<\/p>\n

Ms. Irangani feels especially let down since there has been no relief in over a year after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whom she voted for, came to power pledging \u2014 among other things \u2014 to abolish their loans.<\/p>\n

Their ongoing protest is the latest against the Rajapaksa government \u2014 after the farmers\u2019 agitations in the southern Hambantota district \u2014 from among those who backed their party in the 2019 and 2020 polls.<\/p>\n

President Rajapaksa\u2019s astute election campaign in 2019 had two main thrusts \u2013 enhancing national security, on the heels of the Easter terror bombings that April, and improving rural livelihoods to develop the country. His poll manifesto \u2018Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour\u2019, which has since graduated to a national policy framework, promised to \u201censure relief of village women falling victim from unregulated micro finance schemes\u201d, instead offering \u201cgovernment-sponsored concessionary loan schemes and agricultural loans\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ms. Irangani had reason to be hopeful. \u201cI went all out and canvassed for their candidate in the general elections [August 2020] too, asking women in my village to back their party so our fate might change, but here we are, hearing of more and more indebted women dying by suicide [nearly 200 women, according estimates]. They simply don\u2019t care.\u201d The government has spoken of possible low interest loans as alternatives, but the women are not convinced yet.<\/p>\n

Drawing a circle in the air, she says: \u201cLivelihoods have become a big zero\u201d. If the pandemic severely affected the country\u2019s economy \u2014 with external sector earnings dropping sharply, foreign reserves draining, and the Sri Lankan rupee plummeting to 203 against the U.S. dollar \u2014 daily-waged agriculture labourers like her, who were already reeling under debt, were in for even harder times, amid growing joblessness, falling wages and uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Ms. Irangani\u2019s \u201cdebt trap\u201d began when she returned to Sri Lanka some years ago, after working as a domestic help in West Asia for seven years. Exhausting her meagre savings in an unexpected court battle, she resorted to a loan to survive, and soon, one loan led to another, as companies relentlessly sold easy loans at her doorstep. The lending companies had done the same with war-affected Tamil women in the north and east, who were struggling to rebuild their lives and livelihoods with little state support.<\/p>\n

Exorbitant interest rates<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBanks refused to give loans without any collateral security. Many families had no steady income or big lands to cultivate. At a time when children in our village were going hungry, these microfinance companies offered money,\u201d says Priyanthika Kumari, who heads the Collective of Women Affected by Micro Finance from a cluster of more than 60 villages in the district. \u201cThere are some 1,02,000 women in Polonnaruwa district who have taken such loans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The women paid exorbitant interest rates \u2013 40 % to over 200 % \u2014 amid harassment from collection agents. They signed up for more loans to cope, to ensure their families can afford two decent meals. But despite regular repayments, their principal loans amounts remained undiminished, and their impoverished lives, unchanged.<\/p>\n

When they realised that their exhausting labour was never going to be enough in the face of their mounting debt, they took to the streets, much like their Tamil counterparts who repeatedly agitated during the last five years, demanding a solution to the crisis.<\/p>\n

In fact, it was their persistent calls that pressured the former Maithripala Sirisena-Ranil Wickremesinghe government to announce some targeted relief measures through the Central Bank in late 2018. Acknowledging the predatory nature of microfinance loans, the administration announced greater regulation, an interest rate cap on microfinance loans, a moratorium, and cheaper credit alternatives. But the measures proved too little, too late.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all sounded like a dream at that time, but eventually turned out to be a mirage,\u201d Ms. Irangani recalls. The then incumbent government did not see through the measures announced in its last leg in power.<\/p>\n

That is when President Rajapaksa made the promise, renewing the hopes of affected women. As that hope fades now, the women seated off the main road in Hingurakgoda say that if the government does not meet to their demands by the end of the month, they will launch a \u201cfast unto death\u201d. \u201cWe want to raise this issue nationally. We cannot afford to lose this struggle, we will not give up,\u201d Ms. Priyanthika Kumari says.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:The Hindu<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Meera Srinivasan M. Champa Irangani is in no mood to celebrate \u2018Avurudu\u2019, or New Year, the biggest annual festival that Sri Lanka\u2019s majority Sinhalese community observes mid-April, while Tamils celebrate the Tamil New Year around the same time. \u201cThe New Year will dawn only the day our debts are cancelled. Until then we cannot …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘No New Year for Women Satyagrahis Protesting in Hinguragoda Over Failure of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to Implement Election Campaign of Abolishing Microfinance Debts and Setting up Alternative Sources of Credit’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72569,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72568\/revisions\/72569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}