Bandhan Documentary Film

Bandhan Microfinance Field Visits

Just as the failure to get a summer internship was getting severe, a sliver of hope emerged in the form of Micro Home Solutions - a start-up, associated with microfinance institutions, that I really wanted to work with. But I always knew it was kind of tough, and it turned out it was. But that was when I think I kept my cool and moved ahead and applied to Bandhan. It was my last resort - had it not succeeded, I would've been spending the summer vacation sitting at home. However, now when I look back at it, I truly accept the saying "What happens always happens for the best".

Through this internship, I have fulfilled some of my longest-standing desires in life. I visited villages and talked to their inhabitants. I saw poverty first-hand, and this experience was life-changing. Whether it was cycling 50km on the first field visit, and consequently suffering a heat stroke, or having my feet sink into the soil after the rain, or even interacting with poor children attending Bandhan's schools, it brought me closer to India's villages. I talked to a lot of Bandhan's THP beneficiaries. THP stands for Targeting the Hard-Core Poor, and is Bandhan's program to bring to microfinance level those households that are too poor even for microcredit. This was where I saw the transformational role that Bandhan and microcredit is playing in India's villages. These THP beneficiaries are the ones who earlier couldn't eat two square meals and their houses were dilapitated, but with Bandhan's aid, they have progressed to microcredit level, live in good quality houses now, and eat reguarly. The best thing is that Bandhan achieves this by setting up businesses for them, rather than giving hard cash, so that income generation is sustainable. Many of them have now started taking loans to expand the business that bandhan set up for them. I talked and videotaped many of them, and in talking to them I came up with the idea of my next novel - the struggles of people in India's villages.

The next major impact that this internship had for me was having me travel alone around Kolkata, from the Bangladesh border to the Bay of Bengal. I travelled in the Kolkata suburban trains, sometimes in such crowd that could squeeze the life out of people. I woke up at 4 AM reguarly, and sleepily made my way from my house to the Baghajatin station, from there to Sealdah station, from Sealdah to Howrah by bus, and from Howrah to my destination. It was amazing. By the time I ended my 3 hour journey to my destinations, it would be 7:30 AM, a time at which I, and most of my friends, would not even have woken up on regular days. And here came the solution to my life's biggest regret. When I had to board buses, i'd be clueless - after all, all the buses carried information in Bengali and I cannot read Bengali. So, I had to get back home and start to learn how to read Bengali. And the necessity of doing so ensured that I learnt Bengali fast. Now, I am in a relatively comfortable position as far as reading Bengali is concerned, and all thanks to this internship.

But more was to come. I went back to office with all the primary data I had collected (I'd pushed myself to touch 109 samples, instead of the designated 90). And there I explored the wonders that MS Excel hid. And that inspired me to go ahead and learn these things so that I can use that in future. My thing for computers, which I had lost mid-way, has been reignited again.

The hardest part was, in the midst of all this, the 'personal problems' that I went through. Yes, the common teenage problems - dil, dosti etc. But this internship made me realise how trivial all these problems were. There are people living a daily tighrope between life and death, and I'm worried about this. And by the end of my internship (actually, by the end of the field visits), I find myself in a situation of much greater mental peace. And I've started enjoying my internship in ways that I am sure nobody else enjoys his/her internship. Because I love going to office, meeting everybody there, talking to them, doing my work, learning new things and everything that comes along with them. Yes, my last resort of an internship is now the best internship I could have hoped for.