COVID-19 Business Resuscitation Fund

32,989 Desperate Households, Half a World Away

My name is Philip Chalk, and I have a message to relay from the other side of the world. 

Here in the U.S., because of our society’s wealth and the scale and dynamism of our economic life, we have the reasonable hope that as our COVID-19 restrictions end, we will see at least something like the economic life we took for granted just weeks ago.

But what if we didn’t have that hope? 

My friend Himadri Munshi can tell you: Stripping the very poor of their ability to work puts them at risk of despair and starvation, and it threatens to destroy what little economic freedom and hope they have.

In 1989, Himadri founded the nonprofit Christian Service Society-India, with the hope of relieving some of the poverty among the 10 or 15 million people in villages that fill the vast tidal basin of the Ganges River outside of his native Calcutta. In the 31 years since, Himadri slowly expanded CSS-India’s microlending work, continuously recirculating its loan fund and helping one family at a time start a tiny business—pedaling a tricycle taxi, selling produce or milk from a goat, folding paper bags from newspapers, drying cattle dung for fuel. His ranks of clients grew into the tens of thousands, for the simple reason that there is no one else who will go to the costly lengths necessary to lend to these impoverished people—sending staff in person on bicycle, on foot, and on scooters to collect small repayments each month and give advice. I have visited clients with Himadri myself, and I have seen the way he is welcomed and embraced by an entire village.

This spring, CSS-India had reached a total of 32,989 clients. Even before the coronavirus, though, the world of CSS-India borrowers was difficult: dirt paths that are far more common than roads or streets; bathing and cooking and drinking done directly from the Ganges in the absence of running water; spotty electrification; negligible public services from distant, unresponsive government. More than 70% of CSS-India’s clients were living on $3-$4 per day per family, and the vast majority were effectively illiterate. Their small enterprises had brought them improved diets, upgraded shacks, and rudimentary healthcare, but hardly any had savings that could cover more than a few days of food.

Then, on March 24, came the shutdown: more than 1.3 billion people ordered to stay in their homes. All commerce seized to a halt.

Because Himadri and the 120 CSS-India staffers live under the same laws that prevent movement or work, there is little they have been able to do. But soon, the restrictions should be loosened, and immediately at that point, the need will be enormous. Paralyzed for all these weeks, borrowers who are able will be desperate to get back to work. CSS-India’s loan officers will fan out in a hurry to assess their clients’ health and circumstances — and to announce new repayment schedules and emergency capital.

Those words — “emergency capital” — are why I am writing.

Soon, CSS-India borrowers will need capital — as little as $40 or $60 each — to get their tiny businesses back on their feet. For Himadri, that threatens to be a crisis, as his 31-year-old, bare-bones business model left no room for that kind of cushion. For emergency capital, Himadri and his clients are looking to you and me.

EndPoverty.org, where I worked for several years some two decades ago and through which Himadri and I became friends, is the sole source of outside funding for CSS-India’s loan fund. Some of us in the EndPoverty orbit who are close to Himadri and his work have already made gifts to help support his payroll in the short-term absence of revenue from payments. But the emergency capital needed for so many thousands of clients to re-launch their businesses will be considerable.

During his visits to my home in the U.S. and mine to see him in Calcutta, I have learned to interpret Himadri’s softly-uttered, mannered words, and I know what he is saying now: While CSS-India’s clients desperately need emergency capital to get back on their feet, CSS-India needs it to ensure its future. If very many of its clients fail because they have no capital with which to re-start, CSS-India will have to write off a huge portion of its own assets, dramatically reducing its reach and possibly threatening its solvency.

Will you help me preserve CSS-India’s work?

Precisely because of the widespread poverty where CSS-India operates, dollars go very, very far; gifts need not be huge on our terms to have a huge effect on theirs. Also, a dollar in CSS-India’s hands isn’t mere aid — it’s a working asset. A contribution to CSS-India recirculates, improving the lives of borrower after borrower, year after year.

This is a personal appeal, but I will not know personally if you contribute; still, I hope you will. 

In the meantime, I look forward to updating this story soon and encourage you to check back.

Thank you,

Philip Chalk

Mclean, Virginia