In Kaij taluka of Beed district, a landless Dalit sugarcane cutter named Bhimrao Waghmare once paid ₹60,000 in interest on a ₹25,000 loan he had taken three years earlier from a local moneylender. By the time I visited this corner of Marathwada in early 2024 while reporting on agrarian credit, Bhimrao had not only cleared that debt — he had a savings account, a crop loan at 4% interest, and a small poultry unit financed entirely through a Dalit-led cooperative credit society. No government scheme had managed to reach him. A cooperative run by his own community did.
This is not an isolated anecdote. Across Marathwada’s eight districts, a quiet revolution in cooperative credit has been unfolding among Dalit communities — one that challenges everything we assume about who gets to participate in India‘s cooperative movement. I have spent months tracking these stories, and what I found deserves far more attention than it has received.