‘The wealthy in India need to do much more for the country’

•What are the hurdles along the way?

Well, there is so much bureaucracy and mismanagement that is dangerous, it can push people into debt. We need proper credit bureaus, capacity building, equity funding, improved credit lines. Microfinance needs very wealthy people to commit to it. As India develops, the wealthy in India need to do much more for their country.

•What’s your reaction to the idea that what poor countries need is more salaried jobs, more small and medium enterprises rather than microloans which miss a lot of this vital middle? Not everyone’s an entrepreneur, and many of these loans are simply consumed rather than pumped into any generative activity, so perhaps what poor countries need is more small and middle businesses, more paychecks?

I don’t think it’s a microfinance ‘or’ salaried jobs and more SMEs, it’s ‘and’, you need both efforts simultaneously and they are complementary efforts. You can’t provide salaries for 500 million people immediately.

•Do you think microfinance has drifted from its mission with commercial players stressing more on profits rather than poverty relief?

No, I don’t think so. In fact, I think that they should be mutually beneficial. It has to be profitable and socially efficient. Two-thirds of microfinance institutions are not at the level of sustainability, and that’s the problem.

•You have also written one of the most influential books on music, Noise. Flipping traditional ideas about the culture industry, you argue that music actually heralds the future, that it can actually point to emerging modes of production? So what’s your take on the current state of music?

Music is in many ways ahead of globalisation, ahead of the facts as we imagine them. New technologies, digital tools point to freer economies, I think. And sampling is very interesting — it combines listening and making music, in a rudimentary way. People are taking charge of music, exchanging it with others. These are enormous acts of creativity. When you mix gospel with Sufi music, it creates something that is neither one nor the other, but something else altogether. So I think we’re living in very good times.

Also, by the way — you’ll be happy to know, we finance musicians in a big way.