Moneylender and banker in rural India - the images from below

This article discusses the perceptions of the rural people regarding the main players in the rural financial market in India. In the past, many analytical approaches to rural credit have been taken to analyse the market situation. From the point of view of agricultural and rural development, the acceptance of the institutional approache led to the creation of a new player in the Indian rural credit market, ie the 'banker'. It was done with the clear objectives of not only providing competition to the earlier main player, ie the 'money-leader', and cutting them to size through reducing the dependence of rural people on this source for credit, but also of building the confidence of rural people in institutionalised banking. As opposed to earlier times, there has recently been an increase in the development literature of comparisons between the moneylender and the banker culminating in reflections on the failure of the banking system and success of the moneylenders, in the rural financial markets. These comparisons mostly represent the 'top' of the realm of credit extension and development management. In this article, the views of the moneylender and the rural bank from below, are considered and the socioeconomic variations in the attitude are explored. The analysis is based on data collected from a field study of rural credit in India. The images are considered with the objective of developing newer approaches to credit extension, as the clients' views need to be accorded more importance especially in the context of the liberalisation of the financial sector