In the cramped bylanes of Garia’s Itepanja area, residents say several women have disappeared in recent months, pushed to the brink by debt, harassment and fear. Families rarely lodge police complaints because the root of the crisis – unpaid loans – carries stigma and a looming threat of retaliation.
Namita Mondal of Balia Sahapara shows The Wire a thin, handwritten list. This is the only document issued by lenders. She had borrowed Rs 20,000 to expand her small self-employment venture. After 26 weeks, interest inflated the amount to Rs 31,200.
“I owed only Rs 4,800. The Netajinagar police called, saying if I didn’t pay in three days, they’d ‘pick me up’. Banks don’t give loans now. Only these private companies do,” Sarvani Bhuiya, another borrower, recounts harassment directly from the police.
Residents say that in many parts of Kolkata’s suburbs and rural West Bengal, almost every household is affected in some way by microfinance loans.
Microcredit was originally introduced as one of the instruments intended to support this objective by providing accessible credit to marginalised families.
The sector today is dominated by Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) and Micro-Finance Institutions (MFIs), which obtain funds from public sector banks at interest rates below 10% under the Priority Sector Lending Scheme, and then lend to borrowers, many of them poor women, at significantly higher rates.
15/11/2025