The Unorganized Sector of Credit: Indigenous Creditors in Late 19th Century Calcutta

Abstract

After the fall of the Union Bank in 1848, Bengali businessman in Calcutta became a misnomer in a newly-ordered market place. At the wake of the collapse of Indo-British business collaboration, indigenous business at Calcutta, devoid of the support of the organized credit sector monopolized by the British, fell entirely dependent on the unorganized sector of indigenous credit characterized by exorbitantly high interest rate. The Bengali bania’s univocal subjection to extra-market equations within a lopsided market place attuned to White racial interests perpetrated his discomfiture in the credit market as also in a free market economy