Trickle Up Brings Financial Inclusion to India’s Rural Poor

Jayanti Pradhan lives in a three-room mud-walled house, earns a steady income from farming vegetables and raising goats, and has saved 8,000 rupees (about US$120) in her bank account.

A slender woman with prominent cheekbones and striking features, Pradhan is still among India’s large population of citizens living in poverty, but she is far better off than she was a few years ago. She and her family are moving up the economic ladder out of the deep poverty that still plagues many in India. More than 20 percent of Indians, or 273 million people, still live on less than $1.90 a day, defined as extreme poverty by the World Bank.

Pradhan and her family once lived in such extreme circumstances. The trouble began when her father-in-law borrowed 5,000 rupees (about US$75) to arrange the marriage of his daughter about 15 years ago. Unable to repay, he became an indentured servant to the lender, a landowner in Odisha, a state on India’s eastern coast. When her father-in-law died, Pradhan and her husband inherited the debt.

For seven years, they worked the landowner’s farm to pay off the debt. They also began a family and had three children while still working ...

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