Microlending and the Financialization of Poverty with Sohini Kar

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09/12/23 • 62 min

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It was once very difficult for people experiencing poverty in the Global South to obtain credit and loans because they were seen as unable to provide adequate collateral. This situation changed with the emergence of microfinance, a model pioneered by Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh which has now been widely disseminated to countries around the world.

At the heart of the Grameen system is the organization of borrowers into groups of women (97 percent of the bank’s loans are to women) where collateral is each woman's social connections and reputation. This model is touted for contributing to Women’s Empowerment and for “rising people out of poverty” and even won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

But does this model actually empower women? Does it address the structural causes of poverty? Or is it just another frontier for capitalism — a new way of profiting off of the most marginalized, exploiting the trust and social cohesion among groups of women, and even triggering what’s been described as “India’s micro-finance suicide epidemic”?

To answer these questions, we’ve invited on Dr. Sohini Kar, a socio-cultural anthropologist at the London School of Economics who focuses on the economic anthropology of South Asia, particularly in urban India. She is also the author of Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian Microfinance.

In this conversation, Dr. Kar breaks down what microfinance is and how it’s hurting women in India and beyond, she shares stories of the experiences women in India have had with microcredit programs, she connects microlending in India with predatory payday lending in the United States as part of capitalism’s financialization of poverty, and finally, she offers truly transformative and empowering financial pathways for both investors and purchasers alike.

Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode’s cover art and to Gopal Maurya for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns.

Further Resources:

Dr. Sohini Kar at LSE
Dr. Sohini Kar
Subprime Empire: On the In-Betweenness of Finance, The University of Chicago Press Journals

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode’s cover art and to Gopal Maurya for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns.

Further Resources:

Dr. Sohini Kar at LSE
Dr. Sohini Kar
Subprime Empire: On the In-Betweenness of Finance, The University of Chicago Press Journals

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

Previous Episode

Capitalist Realism with Carlee

“It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Those words have been attributed to both the philosophers Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek decades ago, but they couldn’t feel more true today. As we continue to stare down the double barrels of climate change and COVID without any meaningful response from those who rule over us, without organized and collective action that has been able to make a transformative material impact, and for many out there without even really fully absorbing the reality staring us in the face...yeah. , it certainly seems like it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of this horrifying social order.

This phenomenon, which was so aptly distilled into a bite-sized quote by Jameson and Žižek, has come to be known as capitalist realism — a concept popularized by the late Mark Fisher in a book of the same name written in 2008. In Capitalist Realism, Fisher, an author and educator, explains in eighty pages, just how deeply capitalism has permeated our worlds, how totalizing its hegemony has become in the 21st century, how broadly it has flattened not just our institutions but our interactions, our experiences, our emotions, our traumas — how the commodification of everything has enveloped us all in this era we know as neoliberal capitalism.

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Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode’s cover art and to Chain and The Gang for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns.

Further Resources:

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

Next Episode

Class War and Beer with Brace Belden

Although the reference to war that you just heard could very much be real, actual military conflict — after all, our guest on today’s episode has fought as a freedom fighter in a Kurdish militia in Syria — today’s episode isn’t about that. It’s about a different kind of war: class war. Specifically, class conflict as it manifests in the workplace between employees and employers.

You may already know about Anchor Brewery — maybe you love the beer, maybe you’ve seen the iconic steam beer bottle around, or maybe you don’t know anything about it. Whatever your relationship to Anchor Brewery — you’re about to hear a story that stretches from early San Francisco union history, to the dawn of the craft beer renaissance, and into the present. A story about class war and worker solidarity in the beer industry.

You might also have heard about Anchor Brewery’s unionization campaign that took place in 2019 after this locally beloved brewery was bought by a giant beer conglomerate, Sapporo. That unionization campaign was successful, but recently, Sapporo abruptly, and controversially, closed Anchor Brewing down. Now, some of the workers at Anchor who don’t want to see this centuries-old institution stripped for parts, want to turn the brewery into a worker-owned cooperative.

This is really a sort of David and Goliath story, and to tell it, we’ve brought on Brace Belden, who was an integral part of the union campaign back in 2019. Brace is the co-host of the podcast TrueAnon and a long-time San Franciscan who has worked, in many capacities, within the labor movement. In this episode he tells us the story of the unionization campaign at Anchor — giving us a sort of ‘how to start a union’ 101 crash course. We also explore the struggles with Sapporo, the effort to convert Anchor into a worker cooperative, and also, how local Bay Area beer producers and enjoyers are coming together in an act of true solidarity to stand behind the workers that have been the backbone of this historic brewery.

Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode’s cover art and to Gopal Maurya for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns.

Further Resources:

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.