Your Editor,
The Banks are eager to lend money more to the not needy. “A Bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’s need it”, says Bab Hope, American comedian, centenarian, actor, entertainer and producer. Banks want to thrive on the interest payments made by the borrowers. Therefore they are keen to lend the money to the people who are not poor. It is natural for the Banks to expect certainty of the return of the money lent. People should go for loan as a last resort. And those who take loan must be serious to return the money at the earliest possible time in their own interest to avoid high and more interest payments. Sometimes the borrowers end up in payment of more interest than the principal amount obtained as loan. It is always better to cut one’s own coat according to cloth. If laxity is shown in repayment of the loan amount, the interest component shoots up. Ultimately, the person who raises loan for purchase of property may have to sell the same property for redemption of loan. There is a proverb “Better to go to bed hungry than to wake up in debt”. Credit purchases and purchases on instalments must be avoided to avoid big hole in the pocket due to increased price of the goods purchased and services obtained compared to the price of goods purchased by payment of cash. Sometimes some people raise loans to show that they have loan even though they do not need it. If the loan is to be taken, then the loan so taken must be invested to gain more return than the payment to be made towards the interest on loan. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist rightly says “The most grievous kind of destitution is to want money in the midst of wealth”. “A man in debt is so far a slave”, says Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Essayist, Lecturer, Philosopher, Abolitionist and Poet. What Emerson says is literally true. A borrower has to respond to the beck and call of money lender at least until the loan repayment is made. A wilful defaulter will be a prisoner of his own bad character and conduct. He will be under compulsion always to avoid the money lender. He would be snatching away his own liberty to be outside his house in times of need. Night time is the ‘best time’ for him to leave the house to attend to his needs. A borrower unwilling to return the money lives constantly under the fear of facing the lender.
A rich man is one who is content with what he has. What is liability? Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a thing for which someone is liable, especially a financial obligation”. A creditor is a liability. For a right person, a promise made to someone to do something is also a liability until the promise is fulfilled.
Either it may be a promise to give money or to do some service. Breach of promise is no less cruel than a defaulter not returning the money to the lender. No promise should be made when there is no capacity to discharge it and when there is unwillingness to honour it. A person going back on promise is untrustworthy. Trustworthiness is asset. Untrustworthiness is the liability.
K.V. Seetharamaiah
