On a humid morning in Jam-unipur, a small hamlet in Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh, Meera Devi receives a sack of wheat.

       She weighs it and makes a laborious entry in a ledger filled with thumb-prints. “My neighbour had borrowed this grain during the second lockdown,” she explains as she empties the sack into a large steel vat. “Now that her husband has gone back to work, she has returned it with 25 per cent more grain as interest.” Meera Devi is the manager of the Jamunipur grain bank. Set up in 2017, this grain bank with a capacity of 500 kg has been a source of ...