The United States is looking at Mann Deshi Women’s Cooperative Bank, the headquarters of which is based in Mhaswad, in Satara district, as an innovative model to take financial literacy to rural areas. And the reasons are many.
The United States is looking at Mann Deshi Women’s Cooperative Bank, the headquarters of which is based in Mhaswad, in Satara district, as an innovative model to take financial literacy to rural areas. And the reasons are many.
Archana Rasal was totally broken after the harassment and torture by her in-laws following her marriage a decade ago. With the help of Mann Deshi Women’s Cooperative Bank she started a business. Today, she owns a tailoring and stationery shop and has employed eight women.
Polio-affected Shobha Raut could not find a job after she broke her arm in an accident. She took a loan of Rs15,000 from Mann Deshi Bank to set up a stationery shop. Today, she is supporting her younger brother’s education and her parents.
Vanita Pise was a wage labourer. With a loan from Mann Deshi she started rearing buffaloes when her husband’s business failed. She later switched to making paper cups and owns 11 machines today and has employed six women.
No wonder US president Barack Obama took notice of the cooperative bank when its founder, Chetna Gala Sinha, met him for a few minutes during his recent visit to India. As a follow-up to that meeting, US treasury undersecretary, Lael Brainard, on her maiden visit to India, visited the Satara branch of bank on Wednesday.
Brainard said the US wants to take financial services to the poor and would like to learn from innovative efforts in India.
She wanted to know more about the financial inclusion model like the one implemented by the bank and have a first-hand experience of its work. She described her visit as a “dynamic and an exciting learning experience.”
She arrived in Ramnagar village near Satara in the afternoon and visited the mobile business school run by the bank and met the girls who have benefitted from the free bicycle programme that has helped them to continue their education.
Twenty bicycles were donated to school girls in her presence. She also met members of self-help groups who have benefitted from the bank. She then visited the vegetable market of Satara, where an innovative e-card technology has been implemented by the bank.
During her interaction with the women she enquired about how they borrowed and repaid loans and what difficulties they faced. She was also curious about recovery and was told that there was over 80% recovery.
Mann Deshi has been operating in the remote areas of Maharashtra and Karnataka to provide banking services to rural poor. Their agents use wireless, hand-held simputers, which help with the daily compliance of data even from remote areas. HSBC India has supported their efforts.
The plastic ‘credit cards’ display women’s names and photographs using microchip technology to store financial information. The cards allow the bank’s field agents to view savings account balance, loan account status and repayment history.
Chetna Sinha stated that Mann Deshi was proud to receive such a high-profile visit and hoped it opens new venues for continued cooperation and sharing of information and best practices and thereby expand the success of Mann Deshi to other villages in rural India.
About the bank
Mann Deshi Women’s Cooperative Bank has more than 1 lakh customers in six branches in the rural areas. It was founded by Ashoka Fellow and Yale World Fellow Chetna Sinha, who is the president of the micro-enterprise development bank and its partner NGO Mann Deshi Foundation.
Together these organisations are striving to enhance economic empowerment and advancement of women through savings, lendings, education, property rights and social security initiatives. It is the first organisation in its region to provide life, accident and hospitalisation insurance and pension scheme for women and offers training in marketing, organic farming, financial literacy and veterinary medicine among others.
The bank has its origin in cooperatives organised by Sinha to assist women in raising goats, selling vegetables and weaving. She also strove to bring changes in government policy and law regarding property rights of women.
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