Column

Salaam Mumbai...

Prakash Sarvankar, a 38-year-old defaulter on a Rs50,000 loan, hung himself from the ceiling fan of his chawl, because of the harassment meted out to him by recovery agents ( read goondas) representing the ICICI bank, India’s largest private bank.

Fifty thousand rupees. In some circles, the cost of a Louis Vuitton bag, a Manish Malhotra outfit, a night out at Wasabi, an Omega watch, or weekend in Bangkok.

For this, four goons, acting on behalf of the bank, threatened and humiliated him, abused his family, and took away what possibly was his most prized possession -his CD player.Now scan the business pages of any newspaper, or browse through Page Three, or watch the business news.

Look at the major industrialists shaking hands on big deals, announcing mergers and acquisitions, posing for the cameras at parties and premieres and plays. Guess what most of them have in common with Prakash Sarvankar? Yes, they too are defaulters. But not on loans of Rs50,000. No sir.

Their loans are bigger. By many hundreds of zeroes. So is the bank going to send out an army of goons to recover their instalments? Are they going to be abused humiliated, threatened, and driven to suicide? Or in fact will they be lionized, patronized, cultivated, fawned on, and given more loans with which they can further bankroll their lifestyles, and their ambitions?

Prakash Sarvankar isn’t the first victim of the bank’s strong arm tactics. Go to Wikipedia ( harmless old Wikipedia for God’s sake) and you will see a litany of over a dozen similar instances, where other ICICI small loan defaulters ( notice a pattern here?) have been driven to depths of despair.

Yet, has any action been taken against the said bank? Has its chairman or executives been hauled up, shunned, castigated, or rebuked by polite society. Or do they enjoy the respect of society, receive awards and accolades, and go from strength to strength?

What depths of despair must a family be facing if they cannot come up with a few thousand rupees a month? In a city brimming over with wealth or the promise of it, how far down the food chain must Prakash Sarvankar and his family have existed? Was there no one from who he could have borrowed that small sum to tide over?

Were there no relatives he could turn to? Kindly neighbours? A compassionate employer? Sarvankar could be the peon in your office, the liftman in your building, the small appliance salesman in your neighborhood or your child’s tuition teacher.

Mumbai has hundreds of Sarvankars. How frightening and all- engulfing must appear the black hole of their isolation, and the loneliness of their position.

That a 38 year old man took his own life and left behind three daughters and an ailing wife, because of harassment from a bank at a time when the Sensex reached its highest mark is a chilling morality tale for Mumbai.The police have arrested the recovery agents.

The bank has issued a high minded statement; the story will do the rounds and then become yesterday’s news.But what will happen to Sarvankar’s wife and children now? Who will look after them? Will India’s largest private bank find it in its conscience to educate the children, and give his wife a job? I wonder.

s_malavika@dnaindia.net