The Compassionate Bank: When Farmers Build Values for Finance Management

“Ηow do you speak Hindi so well? I thought I was in a state where people only spoke Tamil?!", said a journalist from Uttar Pradesh who was on a visit to Tamil Nadu for the first time. We had met at a conference on creating an alternative economy, in Madurai. So, when I told him that not far away from where we sat, was a village where it was common to find people speaking Mandarin, Malay, and Hindi apart from Tamil, he obviously found it unbelievable.

- RAMASUBRAMANIAN O.B.

I had first heard of this village - let us call it VP not in connection with its multilingual population, but in connection with its community bank that the villagers managed. When I visited the village, I found that almost all families were into farming. The youth studied and then did farming in the village. But just like everywhere else, farming did not pay them enough. Every few years they would need some extra income. So, all youths in the village went outside for a few years ranging from two to five and earned money working as manual labourers. They went to the Andaman Islands and also abroad to Singapore and Malaysia. They were largely employed in laying - roads in these countries. Back in the village with the extra money, they would use it to repair their old houses, buy two-wheelers, conduct family weddings, or repay long-pending loans.

I found out why the youth came back after a few years. VP is a beautiful village with many kanmai (traditional ponds in the village are called kanmai in southern Tamil Nadu), on the foothills of the eastern ghat mountains. It is very clean and will any day qualify as a picture postcard village. At the entrance to the village is a peepal tree, which marks the village boundary. The villagers have not allowed political parties to cross this tree and enter the village for their campaigns for a long time! Party representatives speak to village elders sitting under the tree and then take leave. I am aware of some other villages too that have a similar norm in dealing with outsiders, particularly politicians.