Months after its IPO, SKS mysteriously fired its CEO.Two weeks ago, the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP), where Indian microcredit is concentrated, ordered microcreditors to cease operating until they had registered with the government---and who knows how long it would take for the government to process their applications. N. Srinivasan, a leading observer, endorsed the law's goal of protecting the poor from predatory lending and then showed just how poorly crafted the law is. It is vague and impractical. The subtext: this is about politics more than policy.The Microfinance Industry Network (MFIN), an industry group formed in the last year or so to respond to growing controversy, sued to block the law. A few days ago, the Andhra Pradesh High Court granted interim relief. The microcreditors can keep lending and collecting.On Friday, police arrested loan officers working for SKS and Spandana, two big lenders, for harassing a borrower named Ammulu. They indicated their interest in arresting the leaders of the two organizations, Vikram Akula and Padmaja Reddy.Advocates for self-help groups (SHGs), which represent an alternative approach to providing financial services to the poor, one seemingly more state-driven and traditionally Indian that the non-state, Bangladeshi microcredit model, are reportedly planning to go national in their campaign for laws like the new one in AP.Vikram Akula is locked in a bitter custody battle with his wife, Malini Byanna, in Indian and American courts. According to a letter she just wrote to the Indian magazine Moneylife, the AP Family Court granted him custody, but she has appealed to the Indian Supreme Court. She also accuses him of misrepresenting the history of SKS and of imperious, self-promoting management. Separately, it has been reported that Akula was convicted of committing domestic assault while married to Byanna and living in Illinois (HT commenter Sara).If the boy, Tejas, is lucky, he will not be consulted in the custody decision. I was once such a boy, and carried the burden of having chosen. One can only hope the court puts his interests firsts.But the poor borrowers of AP are of legal age. And it is not clear to me that they have been consulted amidst the maelstrom in microcredit. Are the courts and parliaments and bureaucrats and police of AP sincerely trying to understand the interests of the poor and put them first?Vikram Akula has a new book out on Harvard Business Press called A Fistful of Rice. He was to barnstorm through DC this week, speaking, among other places, at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies just down the block from me exactly now.Yesterday, the event was canceled because Mr. Akula had to testify before the Indian Supreme Court. The event has not been rescheduled.
