She is a domestic help for the last 10/15 years working in one of the housing colonies of Mumbai, the industrial, commercial and banking capital of India. However, she has no identity – no ration card, no voting right. The slum-lord does not allow it. He collects Rs.1000 rent per month and Rs.400 for electricity both without any receipt. When she started working for us a few months ago we asked her whether she has an account in a bank, and when she replied, 'no', we asked her whether she would like to have one. She immediately agreed to have one. She said that nobody had suggested this to her.
We had started a savings account in the post office, and later in a nationalized bank branch for our earlier maid 10 years ago and she had thanked us for that as she could save money regularly. She saved about one lakh rupees in these years which she would have spent on inessentials – marriage of cousins, various celebrations in her area. None of her close relatives knew about this account. After she received Rs.10 lakh for her hut from a builder, she and other family members shifted to Virar and bought a self-contained one-room kitchen house for Rs.6.50 lakh, spent Rs.50,000 on furnishing the house and kept Rs.three lakh in a FD with the post office. This is one of few good things that have happened to the poor with the development frenzy that is going on in Mumbai.
I asked one of the officers of the bank whether our new domestic help can start an account without a ration card or a voting card. He said she has to have an address which proves her identity. When the maid told us that her daughter is studying in the Municipal School, we asked her to get the admission form from the school with the name of the daughter, father's name and the address. Unfortunately she had to shell out Rs.200 to the clerk get it. She did it without our knowledge. With this information we requested the manager of the bank to allow her to start an account. The manager told us that he has two conflicting criteria for an account in the bank. There is what is called KYC – know your customer, and then there is a mandate to promote "financial inclusiveness" of the poor. He asked us to give a letter of introduction which we did to start her account...
The maid and her husband, a construction worker, are happy that they have an account in a bank. She started an account with Rs.1000/- and is now saving Rs.1000/- every month.
There is definitely wealth at the bottom of the pyramid but the banks do not know it though they were nationalized 50 years ago to help the poor. It is reported that half of India's 1.2 billion people do not have a bank account (Indian Express, Jan.2, 2011).
However, every account holder can help the poor known to him/her to have an account and empower them to some extent till the banks and the government make it mission to extend banking facilities to all citizens. Adhar, the UID scheme, which seeks to provide an identity to all Indians, can start it from the slums of Mumbai so that they can avail all the facilities that the government wants to help the poor.
Poor people from villages go to the nearest town, city or distant megacity in search of work. Unless the government provides primary health-care and education including vocational education to the poor in villages to find gainful employment in the village itself or in its vicinity, they will all flock to urban areas to live in slums. If the government does not focus on the development of villages, where almost 70 percent of the people live, they will drift to the nearest town or rather to the prosperous distant city.
Mahatma Gandhi is right that India lives in its villages. Our former President is right when he updated Gandhiji's vision of gram swaraj with his concept of PURA – providing urban amenities in rural areas – physical connectivity (roads), electronic connectivity ( telecom) and knowledge connectivity ( health & education) which will lead to economic connectivity.
January 15, 2011.
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