Mann Deshi Bank: Banking on Rural Women

                                                                                        By: Neha Jain                                                Prateek Keshwani        [pic 1]

Mann Deshi Bank: Banking on Rural Women

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The Harsh Reality

Shown above is the picture of Kanta Bai, who is an iron-smith, and lives on the roads of a small village of Maharashtra, Mhaswad. It all started in 1995, when she went up to Mrs. Chetna Gala Sinha after struggling a lot with the bank authorities, because no bank in her village was ready to open an account for her. Mrs. Chetna was working as a Shetkari Sanghatna activist those days in Mhaswad along with her husband, who was a farmer with a completely different lifestyle than she was used to as a city-bred girl. Mrs Chetna was surprised to learn the reason behind the Banks’ refusal. They said that since Kanta bai was saving less than 5 Rs a day, so her account wasn’t affordable to banks. At that moment, Mrs. Chetna got the idea of setting up a co-operative bank aimed towards helping and empowering poor women like Kanta bai in rural India.

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Power of Determination

She, along with the other village women applied for the banking license and went to the RBI officials along with their proposal. Since most of the promoters and members of the bank were illiterate, so they faced an outright rejection by the officers. Mrs Chetna got disheartened and cried a lot once she returned to the village. But to her surprise, the other village women neither got dismayed, nor did they cry. It was this incidence which made her realize that while she wasn’t used to rejections the women like Kanta bai were. She gathered immense courage from the indomitable spirit of those women and she started classes of reading and writing from that same night. Once they learnt the basics of the banking system, they applied again after 6 months and went on to meet the Deputy Governor of RBI. This time all the members went together and explained to the officer that, when they were growing up there wasn’t any school around, so for their illiteracy they were not responsible. They further challenged the Deputy Governor to ask from them any banking related problem and they could solve it faster than his officers without using calculators with the condition that, if they failed then RBI can reject their bank proposal. Such was their determination and willpower that in 1997, Mann Deshi Mahila Shakti Bank -the first rural women bank came into existence.

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Dream Begins

With over 165,000 clients, six branches and daily transactions by 2,400 clients, the Mann Deshi Bank today offers, much needed help to women in achieving success by providing education and economic support with health care. With no outside support and money, the women members mobilized the capital, savings and tackled the bureaucrats of the banking sector. One of the challenges that bank faced was that of providing convenience to the rural women so that they do not lose their working day in order to visit the bank. So in this regard Mann Deshi started the doorstep banking. Rural women were so enthusiastic about banking, that they would do savings in the morning and would ask the bank agents to visit them in the evening as well. They just wanted to save and didn’t want to take money at home. They didn’t even wish to keep their pass books with them because then their savings would be disclosed and their husband would use it for alcohol. But this brought forth another challenge for Mann Deshi.