Dalits, tribals, OBCs, 78% of India, get 37% of loan under Modi's MUDRA scheme for marginalized: FactChecker

Loan disbursal in 2017-18

Contrary to the claim by India's saffron rulers, who recently said that 55% of all accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY or the Prime Minister’s Small Business Finance Scheme) belong to individuals from scheduled castes (SC), scheduled tribes (ST) and other backward classes (OBC), a top data analysis site has revealed that it is the general category which gained the most.
According to FactChecker, "Individuals in the general class received 63% of the total loan amount disbursed in 2017-18, followed by OBCs (22%), SCs (11%) and STs (4%). The breakdown in previous years shows minor fluctuations, but no significant change."
Even if considering that the BJP rulers' claim is true, says FactChecker, it is not enough. To quote from the analysis, "Together, SCs, STs and OBCs form 78.4% of the India’s population, so if 55% of PMMY accounts are in their name this is an under-representation." It adds, "The proportion of OBC, SC and ST groups accessing higher-value loan amounts has not increased since the scheme’s inception."
Further, it says, "The largest-value loans, of above Rs 10 lakh, have been given disproportionately to general category individuals, to the extent of 88.7%. And the average loan size, Rs 45,203, may be too small to have a meaningful impact on job creation."

The authorities' claim

“Majority of loan amounts have been disbursed under the Shishu category, these are quite small to create a new business unit,” the top site quotes Happy Pant, head of advocacy at the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, a nonprofit, as saying.
Giving details of the PMMY scheme, the site says, it was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2015 to "improve access to microfinance for non-corporate, non-farm small/micro enterprises and stimulate job creation. Individuals can apply to private or public banks for loans of up to Rs 10 lakh without having to provide collateral."
The scheme was launched against the backdrop of a large number of micro and small enterprises in India belonging to marginalised groups, who lack access to formal credit. Forced to deal mostly in cash, it was felt, they were forced rely on informal sources of finance such as small-time moneylenders who often charge 60%-100% interest.
Yet, FactChcker notes, under MUDRA, "majority of loan amounts disbursed under the two highest-value categories – Kishor (loan value between Rs 50,000 and Rs 5 lakh) and Tarun (Rs 5-10 lakh) – went to those in the general category, and by a substantial margin."
It adds, "In fact, the percentage share of loan amounts disbursed to the general class under the Kishor category has increased from 73.7% in 2015-16 to 76.8% in 2017-18. Similarly, under the Tarun category, loan amounts disbursed to general category account holders have risen from 83.6% in 2015-16 to 88.7% in 2017-18."
"However", regrets FactChecker, "The average size of a MUDRA loan since the scheme’s inception is just Rs 45,203. No more than 1.4% of loans disbursed have been larger than Rs 5 lakh, according to MUDRA data."
It adds, "Commentators have questioned whether the small size of the average loan can enable employment generation and economic growth. Some critics have also pointed out that most self-employed people may not have full-time work – they may actually be underemployed."

Loan distribution under the highest category, Tarun, Rs 5-10 lakh

It quotes Pant as saying, “It is difficult to understand how important MUDRA is as a source of job creation, since no count of the number of ‘created’ jobs exists. There is no formal data on employment generated due to these loans.”
While MUDRA is supposed to boost the government’s job-creation credentials, the site says, "When FactChecker asked the MUDRA Head Office to share data on jobs directly created through the disbursement of loans under the scheme, they were unable to provide any."
“The details of jobs generated under the scheme are not being captured on the MUDRA portal,” said Ramakant Babu Rahate, deputy general manager at MUDRA, in an email response to FactChecker. “However, the portal captures data pertaining to new loan accounts/entrepreneurs. Total 3.50 crore new entrepreneurs have availed loans under MUDRA Yojana in last three years.”
"This response was based on the assumption that the number of loan accounts opened equals the number of entrepreneurs, which may be inaccurate", comments the site.

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog