CONRAD DIAS
Ranchi, March 25: The Jharkhand Government, in convergence with Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Society (JSLPS), has planned to provide economic development of women by connecting them with various means of livelihood. The state government has set a target for the next financial year.
The government is planning to make women farmers socially, economically and technologically advanced. Arrangements will be made to market their products. The target has been set to model 50 cluster organisations.
To increase the banking facilities in the villages, every village will be provided with banking correspondent facilities. A target of 360 new banking correspondents in the region has been set.
“Around 4,691 women are working as banking agents. Some of them are working in the same panchayats if they are big in geographical spread and demography. Out of these, around 1,491 are working as banking correspondent sakhi (BCS) after proper training. The target is to have at least one BCS in all of the 4,370 gram panchayats in the state,” said Dheeraj Horo, state programme manager (financial inclusion), JSLPS.
The banking correspondents provide basic financial services such as customer identification, collection of information/applications, individual account opening, cash withdrawal, deposit, transfer, Aadhar seeding, pension services, scholarships to school children, wage payment under MGNREGA and fund withdrawal under PMAY etc.
Manish Ranjan, rural development secretary, Jharkhand had earlier said in a statement, “The concept of banking correspondent is to take banking into the pockets of rural people, associating women with it has far-reaching consequences. It has the potential of a silent social revolution where women become self-reliant. It also promotes them as role models among the local population.”
They will also provide social security to the members of Sakhi Mandal. Under this, their accounts will be linked for pension and insurance. The target is to connect a total of 26,000 Sakhi Mandals bank accounts and 12 lakh members of Sakhi Mandasl with insurance.
