Bumbay! Bumbay!

RACIST! SOME netizens called out Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol for his post  Goodbye Bombay! where he shared President Duterte’s reported order to have foreign nationals engaged in the "usurious '5-6' money-lending scheme" arrested and deported.

In a subsequent media interview, Piñol denied any racist color to the term “Bumbay” as a generic reference to Indian nationals, thus: "'Wag na tayong magbolahan. Common knowledge naman 'yan na 'yung mga umiikot na naka-motor... there was nothing racist about it. But the fact is 'yung mga umiikot talaga na nagpapautang na naka-motor ay 'yung mga kapatid natin na Bumbay."

Further sayeth he: "I don't even think the name 'Bumbay' is derogatory. Parang 'Pinoy' lang rin siguro sa atin, tawag sa atin Pinoy, is that derogatory? I don't think so."

And more: "'Yung mga ganu'ng pangalan, walang malisya, we've always referred to them as 'Bumbay.' Please don't accuse me of being racist. That's the furthest from the truth."

That truth, inconvenient but indubitable: Indian nationals have always been referred to in the Philippines as Bumbay, no matter what area of the sub-continent they come from. And usury of the 5-6 kind has been so associated with them so long that it has become their very synonym.

As that joke propounds: Why do kidnap-for-ransom groups avoid abducting the Bumbay?

Answer: The KFRs cannot afford to collect ransom by daily installment. They’d surely be caught.

Politically incorrect, even sick maybe, but the joke has factual grounding.     

Yeah, so fixed in the collective mind of the Pinoy is the Bumbay-5-6 synonymity that Piñol asked "Meron ba?" when told that there are also usurers among the natives and other nationalities. Pakistanis and Chinese, reportedly.

Why, even bar topnotchers too. If we take as truth the repartee at the hustings of long ago of the late lamented Don Francisco Nepomuceno downsizing the election hopes of a rival for the Angeles City mayorship with but a mention of 5-6, referencing not so much the height as the alleged business of the candidate.

Small-town usury

In my youth in then-as-now-and-forevermore-somnolent Poblacion, Sto. Tomas, 5-6 was a sunrise-to-sundown house-to-house enterprise.

Soon as the talisain crows, comes out his stone mermaid-decorated gate Apung Milio – ever in his trademark floral Kanebo shirt, sharkskin trousers and fedora, mother-of-pearl studded cane in his right hand, thick leather portfolio gripped by his left, faux diamond rings (“Buldit lang basu (bottom of broken glasses) friend,” he was wont to say) in three fingers already flashing even in soft light. To go about his trade: Extending loans, ultra-micro by today’s standards, but running the whole gamut of human needs: pamalengke to the talipapa vendor and sari-sari storekeeper, for palay seedlings or fertilizer to the farmer, pang-gas to the jeepney driver, pamasahe to the wage-earner, pang-tuition or pang-school supply, pang­-fiesta even; as well as collect “payments-in-drops,” baldugan in Kapampangan, pa-hulugan in Tagalog, from borrowers.

Apung Milio was the most accessible, if not convenient, ATM of his day. That was Ang Taong Mauutangan before the machine took over. In his wake came those – locals too – that offered financial loans as well as home appliances to be paid in installments, at 5-6 interest levels.  

To inflict upon the Bumbay all the ills of 5-6 is therefore most unfair, Filipinos and other nationalities being engaged in the trade too. To heap everything evil in 5-6 is as unfair, if not more.

Big help                  

Storekeepers in Metro Manila public markets interviewed on national TV were one in saying the friendly Bumbay is “a big help” in their businesses, being “readily accessible” for loans “where you need them, when you need them.” I did not hear “loan shark” said or even referenced to in any of the interviews.

One Hardeep Singh, a Sikh most probably because of his last name, said borrowers are “usually” given 80 to 150 days to pay and that “…depende sa tao kung magkano [ang kayang] ibigay.”

It appears there that the Bumbay is furthest from the exacting Shylock that he has been profiled as. Being no different, if not even more considerate, than the lending companies who easily outdo the Bumbay in the game of loaning and daily collecting.    

Though essentially ad misericordiam, reasonably valid is the plea of one Goldy Kumar: “Siyempre una, mahirap kasi 'yung tanggapin mo bigla na sinabi tigil 'yung trabaho na 5-6. Iyan na talaga trabaho namin eh. Buhay namin 'yan. Wala naman kaming ginagawang masama. Pa'no na ang pamilya namin?”

Still, the Duterte administration remains poised to hit hard to strike out 5-6.

Though, as Piñol noted, government "is not coming into this controversy holding an empty bag."

The Department of Trade and Industry has announced it would implement a P1-billion micro-lending program for small and medium enterprises, which, it said, makes up more than 90 percent of the country's businesses.

Swell, but the mechanism with which the SMEs can avail themselves of the benefits of the programs should detract and detach from the usual template of most stringent requirements and qualifications, volumes of documents and supporting papers, not to say long man-hours in doing business with government. Facilitate and simplify credit accessibility, in short. Surely, it would do a lot of good too to infuse the suki touch to it.  

And beat the Bumbay in his own game.