Sanjay Dutt plays Sattarbhai, a recovery agent, in his forthcoming film EMI

Two Bajaj Pulsars screech to a halt at the petrol pump near Five Star Market in Kidderpore. Five young men, two of them barely out of their teens, jump off.

Loan recovery agents are supposed to be about bikes and brawn. The bikes are there, but the brawn is missing. It is hard to imagine these slightly built, smiling youths abusing and harassing people unable to pay EMIs (equated monthly installments), breaking furniture and threatening their families. They look nothing like Sanjay Dutt in EMI, his forthcoming comedy.

But Kidderpore is recovery agent country. Over 60 per cent youths in the port area, which has the largest concentration of Muslims in the city, harass EMI and credit card defaulters for a living. They form the majority of recovery agents in the city, whose number cannot be estimated. Recovery agents also come in significant numbers from Topsia, Park Circus, Metiabruz and Tiljala, which are also poor, Muslim-dominated areas — another index of unemployment among Muslim youth.

The style

Aslam, in black jeans and yellow T-shirt, sits on a wooden bench with the other four of the Pulsar gang in a lane dotted with shanties, off Maulana Mohammed Ali Road. Illegal constructions have changed the skyline here in the last few years. The 27-year-old is preparing the day’s “status report”, to be submitted to the recovery agency he works for, which in turn reports to the bank.

Aslam has two cellphones slung around his neck. The flashiest of the lot, 22-year-old Ejaz, in a red shirt, shiny sunglasses and hair like Salman Khan in Tere Naam, also wields two cellphones, taking directions from a bank executive and fixing an appointment with his supervisor, the agents’ immediate boss.

“Reliance wala sirf girlfriend ke liye hai. Jaldi shaadi karna hai (The Reliance phone is only for my girlfriend. I want to get married soon),” says Aslam, making his colleagues smile and women washing clothes at a roadside tap crack up with laughter. “Loan lekar shaadi karega kya? Lekin tujhe kaun loan dega re? (Will you take a loan to marry? But who will give you a loan?)” asks a woman.

The port area is, unofficially, blacklisted by loan companies as it has the highest number of defaulters. “Yeh area negative hai. Yahan par bank loan nahin deta… yahan ke logon se loan nikalta hai (This area has been marked negative. Banks don’t offer loan to people staying here. They recover their money with the help of people living here),” says Aslam, who makes about Rs 4,000 per month, plus commission.

That’s irony number one. No bank owns up to them. Recovery agents are recruited by an agency, which mediates with a bank. While recovering money for banks and harassing people are illegal — the Reserve Bank of India and the Supreme Court say so — and the banks deny that they hire recovery agents at all, for the young men, it’s a “proper” job with a neat corporate structure. That’s irony number two.

Job profile

The Kidderpore gang, of course, has no time for ironies. “Jo zyada shor macha sakta hain, us agent ka bahut demand rahta ha (The more noise an agent makes, the more he is in demand),” Aslam says before rushing to an “interview” with an executive of the loan recovery section of a multi-national bank.

They have the city divided into codes. What we know as Camac Street, is simply 17. The port area is 23 and 24. The area code decides how they will approach the customer. If he’s from a 17 or 29 (Southern Avenue), public humiliation will be more effective than flexing muscles, they say.

The hierarchy is simple. One joins as a “collector”, becomes an “agent” and then “supervisor”. A collector is trained on the job by agents for a month. As in a sales job, the banks set monthly “targets”.

Aftab Alam, who left his BA course to become an agent, recalled that one of his colleagues was promoted last year for his performance, but demoted this year for not meeting the “target”. “Sab hamara bahar ka style dekhta hain, koi yeh nahi dekhta ki pet mein kya hain (People see our stylish exterior, no one bothers about our problems),” says Ejaz, the sole breadwinner in a family of seven.

Fancy work no more

But they don’t have much choice. The port area and Kidderpore never offered many options to its young; now they are even fewer.

A Class IX drop-out, Aslam, the lone earning member in his family of eight which lives in a 12 ft x 12 ft room in a Maulana Mohammed Ali Road shanty, went to Hong Kong along with some local “smugglers” two years ago. Going to Hong Kong illegally was a trend for a while in the area. The boys would work in restaurants and remain in hiding. But of late the authorities hunt them out with alacrity.

“I worked illegally in a restaurant for six months, before I was deported,” says Aslam.

After returning to Kidderpore, for a while, he became a carrier of goods, which he used to supply to the shops in nearby Fancy Market and Five Star Market — the den of smuggled products.

But alas! Since liberalisation and the opening of markets, Fancy Market is no longer what it was either. Its glory days of smuggled watches, umbrellas, cameras, gadgets, synthetic dress materials are over. The business has been taken over by shopping malls where imported goods are easily available. “Even hawkers sell them now!” says Aslam.

After going jobless for a year, he met a school friend last year who was working as a recovery agent and jumped on the bandwagon. And so did hundreds of others like him. Every second household in Maulana Mohammed Ali Road has a recovery agent to its credit.

Haldia ho!

Things were not so bad in Kidderpore once. Most of the residents in the area, with a population of nearly a million, migrated from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and worked as labourers at the city port during its heyday. The problem started after the business shifted to Haldia port in the 1990s.

“The retired port labourers had not educated their children. As a result, they now find themselves without a job and take to petty crimes and other illegal activities,” says a local CPM leader.

“The business (at Fancy Market and Five Star Market) is not good these days following stringent visa norms. The youths have to do something to survive,” says Shamima Rehan Khan, the councillor of ward 77.

They find it difficult to find jobs elsewhere. “Such is the discrimination against Muslims that many youths in Kidderpore are working in Burrabazar by changing their names. For them the job of recovery agents is hassle-free,” says a WBCS officer living in the area.

There seems to be no other solution for Kidderpore. Plus the banks keep needing rowdy young men.

“We regularly receive complaints against recovery agents. They terrorise people, use filthy language and even beat up defaulters. But whenever we approach the banks they deny employing these people. What can you do?” asked an officer of the anti-rowdy section of the detective department.

The recovery agents keep complaining too. Their monthly targets may be anything between Rs 50,000 to well over a lakh. “The agency takes a hefty cut and hands us peanuts,” says Ahmad Ansari, a veteran recovery agent in the port area.

“If we don’t perform, the bank managers and agency owners abuse us. But with the markets plunging with each passing week, it’s becoming even more difficult to recover dues,” says Ejaz. His target for October is Rs 50,000, and till the 22nd, he had recovered only Rs 1,400.

(Some names have been changed)

Day in the life of a debt collector

7am: Wakes up, bathes at a roadside tap and leaves home on bike

Recovery agents from Kidderpore; (below) the receipt book issued by their bank. Pictures by Amit Datta and Imran Ahmed Siddiqui

9am: First stop: home of a defaulter in Thakurpukur. Abuses and threatens him. Humiliates another customer in front of neighbours at Silpara before dropping in at the agency and collecting the list of defaulters

1.30pm: Lunch at a roadside eatery followed by more visits to offices and shops of defaulters

4pm: Seizes the motorcycle of a trader at Burrabazar market and deposits it at the agency

7pm: Deposits the day’s collection and status report at the agency

8.30pm: Returns to Kidderpore and chats with other agents for an hour

9pm: Makes the day’s final call at a defaulter’s home

10.30pm: Returns home. Has dinner with family

1am: Goes to sleep at home, if space permits. Or in the street