Story of Bandhan’s First Employee

Bandhan’s very first employee, joined on 1 July 2002. He oversees 500 DSCs today.

He comes from a family which owned land, and at the same time, dabbled in business in a village called Uttar Harishpur in Howrah. His father owned a rice mill and ran a decorator’s business, putting up pandals for weddings and local festivals in the neighbourhood. However, the business did not do well and his father turned into an alcoholic. In his schooldays, Samanta, the eldest of three brothers, often had to intervene to stop his father from beating up his mother.

To earn money, Samanta resorted to selling eggs during his college days. Selling one egg fetched him 20 paise, so, by selling around 200 eggs, he could make Rs 40 a day. But selling 200 eggs a day was not easy; it was hard work. By the time he joined the Purash-Kanpur Haridas Nandi Mahavidyalaya in Howrah, for graduation in commerce, Samanta grew ashamed of his inebriated father who often needed to be picked up from the road and carried home.

It was only natural that Samanta would try his luck when Village Welfare was looking for people for its ‘training rural youth for self-employment’ (TRYSEM) programme. Village Welfare Society provided skill development training for youth, to generate employment opportunities in carpentry, agro machinery repairing, electrical wiring, radio repairing, two-wheeler repairing, handloom weaving and zari embroidery, among other things. He applied for the nine-month course which, in 1991, promised Rs 300 as stipend every month through the local panchayat body. Incidentally, Maity, chairman of Village Welfare Financial Services, was a distant cousin of Samanta’s father.

Next year, Village Welfare offered him a job with Rs 500 as salary. The project, funded by Germany’s Karl Kübel Stiftung (KKS), was to distribute ducklings among the poor. Samanta’s job was to clean duckling excreta from the cages, and distribute the young ones. Later, he got a promotion and a salary of Rs 700 per month, and became the second in command after Shyamal Chowdhury, who was then running the project.

By 1994, Village Welfare decided to start a microfinance business. The only other entity which was into microfinance in West Bengal then was South Asia Research Society (SARS), a council of microfinance practitioners and associations. One Bijoy Krishna Gharami of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank started training Village Welfare employees even as it was forming women SHGs—the bedrock of the microfinance business. At SHG meetings, they would talk about income, savings, loans, and social issues such as dowry and the oppression of the girl child.

Samanta was selected as one of the four managers to run the show. His salary went up to Rs 900 a month, and he shifted to Dakshineswar where the microfinance office was located at Village Welfare boss Ajit Maity’s residence, near the famous Dakshineswar Kali Temple. Over the next two years, he started overseeing MFI branches at Nimta, Beliaghata, Birati in north Kolkata and north 24 Parganas.

After Ghosh joined Village Welfare as head of operations in 1999, they got to know each other and struck a relationship which has lasted a lifetime. Once, at Samanta’s house, Ghosh told his mother, ‘I will make your son’s future,’ even though at that time, he could not think of leaving Village Welfare.

Both of them were dreaming about setting up a microfinance organization but it was not easy for Ghosh to woo Samanta from Maity’s fold. He succeeded in doing so through relentless persuasion and even playing a trick which made Maity doubt Samanta’s commitment to Village Welfare.

Ghosh resigned from Maity’s organization when Samanta was in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, to expand Village Welfare’s reach. Immediately, Samanta too resigned and joined Bandhan. Maity tried hard to convince him to stay back but did not succeed. After Samanta’s resignation, Ghosh told him, ‘If I can make both ends meet, you too will be able to do so.’ at that time, Samanta’s salary was Rs 3500. He settled for far less.

When Bandhan expanded to Tripura, Samanta led the team that set up branches in the north-eastern state. They took a flight from Kolkata in June 2006—the first flight taken by any Bandhan employee for official work. The entire office came down to see them off at the door. Samanta bought a new wheeled suitcase for this.

Tamal Bandyopadhyay is the author of two best-sellers --  "A Bank for the Buck" and "Sahara: The Untold Story". He writes a popular weekly column on finance, Banker's Trust, every Monday at Mint where he is a Consulting Editor. You can buy his new book "Bandhan: The Making of a Bank" here.

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