Victims of predatory informal moneylending, a practice widespread across Nepal’s Tarai belt, have begun a roughly 400 km protest march from Janakpurdham to Kathmandu, demanding the government finally act on repeated promises to rein in the practice. The march is being led by the Farmers’ and Workers’ Movement Against Predatory Lending Nepal, whose central leadership includes Awadhesh Kushwaha.
Under this system, informal lenders extend cash loans to poor, often landless households at exorbitant, frequently compounding interest rates, sometimes running into several percent a month, calculated in ways that borrowers can rarely track or contest. What begins as a modest loan, taken to cover a medical emergency, a wedding, or a lean agricultural season, can within a few years balloon into a debt burden that costs a family its land, livestock, or home. The practice has been especially entrenched in Madhesh’s rural districts, where formal banking access remains limited and social hierarchies leave borrowers with little bargaining power against lenders.
The march set off from Tirhutiyagachhi in Janakpurdham on Thursday evening, with organisers estimating around 400 participants at the outset, a number expected to swell as it moves north through the plains toward the capital.
This is the latest flashpoint in a cycle of unrest that has recurred across Madhesh for years. The government has reached four separate agreements with victims’ groups over recent negotiating rounds, covering debt relief, caps on interest rates, and prosecution of lenders found to be operating usuriously, but organisers say implementation of these commitments has been close to zero. The renewed march is intended to press the case directly with policymakers in Kathmandu, reviving pressure on a government that victims’ groups say has repeatedly negotiated in good faith without following through.