Poor Rautahat people drowning in debt taken to celebrate festivals

BY OUR CORRESPONDENT

Gaur, Nov. 6: The debt of the poor and low-income people in Gaur, in Rautahat district, who celebrated the recently concluded festivals taking loans from the moneylenders, has become a problem.

Many poor locals had taken loans to celebrate festivals like Dashain, Tihar and Chhath copying their rich cousins despite their low and unstable income. Due to this, they are drowning into debt.

Chiranjibi Jha, a local, said that Rs. 16,000 was spent to fulfill the desires of his family members to buy new clothes, goat and other stuffs which had left him with the debt of Rs. 10,000. 

The family members wanted to celebrate the festivals like their neighbors, he added.

Likewise, another local Ramekwal Pandit said that he had a debt of Rs. 15,000 taken to fulfill the wishes of his family during Tihar. He said he had to take loan because the family members had wished to eat delicious food and buy new clothes during the festival. At other times of the year, the family is dependent on the food available to them.

Even though it is natural for the locals to eat delicious food and wear good clothes during the annual festivals, many low-income locals of the district are reeling from the burden of debt.  

Hemchandra Jha, a local social worker, said that due to the superstition that it is mandatory to kill goat for meat and wear good clothes, many were sinking in unnecessary debts in the

district. He added that if the festivals were celebrated for love, social harmony and sharing according to one’s capability instead of showing off and copying others, the debt problem would be solved.