News — banking

After many months of work, we have finally secured an ATM for our workers at Chota Tingrai Tea Estate. This ATM will allow digital salary payments for workers and 24/7 access to cash for the community. We hope that this increased access to their accounts will help our workers grow their savings accounts, and save them long, and currently thanks to COVID-19, hazardous trips to town for banking. However, we must provide a lot of education to our workers in order to ensure that inclusion in the formal financial sector benefits them. For example, many of our workers do not know how...

What we have accomplished so far As of January 15, we have managed to open bank accounts for all Chota Tingrai’s permanent workers. Additionally, 85% of casual workers now have accounts. We hope to complete casual worker bank account enrollment in a few weeks. The credit for this progress goes to our banking correspondents. They have worked tirelessly, helping workers fill out applications. They have met with bank officials innumerable times to ensure the bank understands workers’ needs. Thanks to the banking correspondents, the bank has agreed to install ATMs with biometric identification. This will eliminate the potential of pin...

 “At 11:29 PM you had 2500 INR in your wallet. At 12.00 AM you had 5 pieces of paper.” If you follow the Indian news, then you have heard about demonetization- the sudden removal of 1000 and 500 Indian currency (INR) notes, or 76 percent of the currency, from economy.  This has had huge impacts, both good and bad. Every Indian has debates the merits and costs of the move. Their only certainty: that the Indian economy will never be the same. On this blog, Mana provides an on the ground view of developing a social business in India. Because...