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Where Angels Prey

By AT News |

Microfinance: providing financial services for small businesses or entrepreneurs, especially in poor or rural communities, who do not have access to traditional banking or financial services. Sounds wonderfully altruistic, but just ask the people of Andhra Pradesh what their thoughts are about microfinancing and you’ll probably hear a completely different answer.     

Ramesh S. Arunachalam, economic development strategist and the author of a new novel, Where Angels Prey, reveals the devastating truths that often lurk behind the good intentions of Wall Street’s interest in India’s poor. Loosely inspired by real life events in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachalam’s fictionalized account exposes the double-edged sword that emerges when no safeguards are put into place.

While the rest of the world reels under a severe financial crisis, India’s microfinance sector enjoys an unprecedented boom. Why on earth are people investing such huge amounts of money in an obscure industry, especially at the time of global recession, and why is Wall Street suddenly so interested in India’s poor? That is exactly what Robert Bradlee, senior correspondent with The New York Post, sets off to investigate, along with his journalist friend, Chandresh. Little does he know that his search for a scoop would lead him through a complex multi-pronged web of deceit, fraud, manipulation and financial crime, remote controlled from distant lands by an entire chain of financial sector stakeholders. 

Gripping, racy and meticulously researched, this financial crime novel weaves in and out of the affluent world of high-powered boardrooms and the grueling poverty of the remotest villages of India, to reveal the devastating truths that often lurk behind “good intentions.” 

Where Angels Prey is now available worldwide through Amazon (worldwide), Amazon India, Flipkart, iBooks, Kobo, Nook,www.whereangelsprey.com, NetGalley, BarnesandNoble.com, AuthorsUpFront and wherever books are sold.

Ramesh S. Arunachalam wears many hats. He is an Author, Film Maker, Columnist, Entrepreneur and Economic Development Practitioner.  An Engineer with an MBA degree, he has 25 + years of experience across 25 countries in 5 continents through 240 assignments in the financial sector including microfinance and financial inclusion. He has worked with a wide range of stakeholders such as multi-laterals, bi-laterals, governments, private sector, NGOs and others. His blog on microfinance has been well received and he has also penned two books - The Journey of Indian Microfinance and An Idea Which Went Wrong: Commercial Microfinance in India – both of which, have received critical acclaim. 

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Assam Times Staff. editor@assamtimes.org

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