At a small government school somewhere in rural Maharashtra, a middle-aged teacher proudly hands over his ATM-cum-debit card to his young students. He openly shares his ATM PIN in the classroom. “These are my children, they won’t deceive me. I feel a sense of pride when the bank messages me that Rs 5 has been spent from my account. This is a huge leap in the confidence of these children who have known barely a word about financial literacy,” Lakshman Anna Golhe tells this correspondent gleefully, unable to hide his ear-to-ear smile. Many of his students belong to the tribal and low income group families.
The children, aged between 12 and 17 years, would spend Rs 5 each from his account to get themselves goodies. Huddling at a local tea mart or a general store, they would buy biscuits or pencil or vada-paav or chocolates or fruits, swiping their teacher’s card at these small stalls, with ease. Without a penny in their pockets, they would swipe the card, enter the “secret” PIN code by themselves, and then carry the receipt of their transaction without fail. They have already done this once with the “Gift Cards” issued to them by the Bank of Baroda. They would then go back home and talk to their parents about the importance of cashless transactions and the ease of it.
FINANCIAL LITERACY
“Dhasai and the surrounding villages and tribal settlements have a low rate of literacy. If we went to talk to them about the importance of financial literacy, they may just discard us. That is not the case when their own children talk to them. They at least give them a patient hearing. The reason behind roping in children is that they should help make this change sustainable. It is easy to go cashless. It is more difficult to sustain it. That is where the younger generation will help in carrying this mantle ahead,” said Supriya Patkar, a Commerce teacher at Janata Vidyalay, Dhasai.
Dhasai is India’s first cashless village. Tucked inside the mountain ranges of the Sahyadris, near Malshej Ghat, it is causing waves at the national level for leading the way. Dhasai is situated in Thane’s Murbad district, over 120 km away from Mumbai. It is not easy reaching there by public transport. The nearest accessible train station is Kalyan, which is over 60 km away. One has to then take a State Transport bus to reach Tokawade village, from where a small bypass leads one further inside to the village. Though Dhasai itself has a population of barely 10,000 people, nearly 80,000 people from the surrounding 27 group gram panchayats are dependent on the only marketplace that it offers.
“Cashless India begins from Dhasai village, Maharashtra!” tweeted Maharashtra Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, a few days ago. “Maharashtra’s first step towards becoming cashless economy. Dhasai village (Thane) goes cashless as appealed by Hon Narendra Modiji,” tweeted Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. He also appealed to other villages to follow suit and walk on the path of financial independence.
A recent international report, “Global Microscope 2016: The enabling environment for financial inclusion” has pegged India at the third position among 55 countries, for financial inclusion. India has shown consistency in all 12 indicators, including transactions in e-enabled accounts. India’s steps towards financial inclusion include opening 221 million Jan Dhan accounts and providing access to credit, insurance, pension and other financial facilities to its untapped population. The idea of taking Dhasai on this path was initiated by Ranjit Savarkar, a prominent social figure from Murbad who has started the Maharashtra Military School there. He is also the grand-nephew of renowned freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
One nationalised bank and one district bank serve the population of around 90,000 people including Dhasai’s 10,000, and 80,000 from surrounding villages. Bank of Baroda now plans to start a digital branch there, villagers told The Sunday Guardian. The bank has already partnered with Ranjit Savarkar to issue POS machines and pave the way for cashless transactions in the village. It has started opening current accounts of traders and has waived off all charges towards security and installation of POS terminals. The bank has also waived off commitment charges. So, while a trader wanting a swipe machine would ordinarily have to pay around Rs 11,000, the traders in Dhasai got their machines for free.
It has been well-celebrated until now that even small tapris (tea stalls/kiosks) in Dhasai are equipped to transact with cards. From a barber’s shop to a tea-seller to a fertilizer seller, there is not a single category of shop that does not have a swipe machine or POS terminal. Of the 100 shops at Dhasai market, 62 have already applied for a POS terminal. But what is barely known is that the children of Dhasai’s school are equipped with the confidence to handle the card properly. Not just that, they also know the procedure to open an account, report the loss of card, block a card in case of theft or loss. A novel social experiment of educating school children in financial matters has seen one of its initial success stories. The larger game plan which is unfolding is that of financial inclusion through digital technologies—from bringing the small shop owners under institutional banking umbrella to extending the net of Jan Dhan accounts by opening basic saving accounts of the adivasis and low income group families.
EAGER TO LEARN
Twelve kilometres from Dhasai, in another remote tribal locality of Khopiwali, 17-year-old Sandhya Bhande has insisted to her anganwadi sevika mother that she should get an ATM-cum-debit card. At a place which is so small that addresses are defined by proximity to structures like a telecommunication tower, financial literacy isn’t a priority for many. But Sandhya has already travelled 12 km to a district bank, to get a form for her mother. 40-year-old Sunanda Bhande holds a savings bank account, but has never used a debit card. “I visit the bank rarely. But I had to give in because Sandhya kept insisting,” she tells this correspondent. “The form has been filled. She will submit it now, whenever she can spare the time to travel to the bank,” says Sandhya.
Sandhya has recently been a part of the financial literacy training programme held for around 800 students of her school, Janata Vidyalay. After classroom training on cashless economy and its importance, these students were handed Gift Cards issued by Bank of Baroda, and were taught how to conduct transactions using these cards. They were instructed to buy anything worth not more than Rs 5 each. The novelty of the experiment, the opportunity to handle a card independently and the training about the need to go cashless had such an impact on these children that they have now become the agents of change.
“Using cards in our day to day lives also brings control over unnecessary expenditure,” 17-year-old Karishma Attar tells this correspondent. Her classmate, Kunal Dhalpe says the shopkeepers can no longer pocket small amounts. “If we bought things worth Rs 198 or Rs 99, the shopkeepers would not give us back Re 1 or Rs 2. They would say they didn’t have change. But now, there is no question of losing your precious money,” he says. 15-year old Krupali Gholap gives a step-by-step description of the procedure of blocking a card in case of theft or loss. 18-year-old Vishwas Mengal says he has already told her homemaker mother to start using a card for daily shopping needs. Vishwas stays at a tribal settlement a few kilometres away from Dhasai.
Today, Rajaram Bhanushali and Bhavesh Bhanushali, both traders at Dhasai and Sonavale, are already waiting for a bank to install POS terminals. The day Bhavesh Bhanushali’s 14-year-old daughter Girija underwent the financial literacy training in her school and handled the Gift Card, she came back home all charged up. She insisted and explained to her father and grandfather the need for getting a POS machine installed at their shops. “The impact on both of them was so tremendous, that they immediately approached the bank, making an application for a swiping machine,” tells proud grandmother Nirmala Bhanushali. “Going cashless is so beneficial for us traders. There won’t be a concept of udhari (lending) from now on. We won’t have to laboriously maintain long registers for it. If someone asks us to lend them things because they don’t have cash to pay for them, we can simply ask them for their debit cards,” she says. Girija has talked to them about the importance of cashless transactions.
Girija’s mother Alaknanda, holds a debit card, but has barely ever used it. “Now she keeps on telling me that I should use it to buy things. I am thinking of using it for various purposes including shopping. Who wants to take the risk of carrying cash?” she asked.
The women said that inclusion in the banking system will also help them in the future when they want to start their own small business. “Some of us women can come together and initiate some small business. The bank will then help us with credit,” Nirmala Bhanushali said.
43-year-old Neha Patil has been running Swara beauty parlour in Dhasai for a decade now. After her 16-year-old daughter Vaishnavi insisted, she has now applied for a POS terminal for her parlour.
When this correspondent took a walk around Dhasai, she located only one ATM booth. It was loaded. But surprisingly, there were no queues outside the booth. This correspondent could easily withdraw cash from there in no time.
VISION FOR FINANCIAL INCLUSION
“When we give the children Gift Cards, it takes away fear away from their minds. We are also holding mobile banking workshops for people here. When we open saving bank accounts here, and issue RuPay debit cards, we bring these people under the social security net. They become eligible for Rs One Lakh life insurance. They get into the habit of saving. They learn important lessons in financial literacy. These are all means of financial inclusion,” said Vijay Singh, a Chief Manager at the Bank of Baroda.
Bank of Baroda has already opened over 150 basic saving accounts within three days of starting the drive. Vijaya Bank, the only nationalised bank in Dhasai, gets at least 50 applications daily for opening saving accounts, an official of the Bank said. “When we open saving bank accounts, we are creating basic structures for the formation of SHGs too (Self Help Groups),” Singh said.
“When the officials of Bank of Baroda came to us for the first time with the proposal of issuing POS terminals, we told them that we wanted a digital branch in our Dhasai,” said Swapnil Patkar of Dhasai Vyapari Sangha. Kailash Gholap, a local social activist who mobilised the youth in spreading awareness about cashless transactions, said the village would see financial facilities that would match an urban centre like Mumbai.
“When we first approached them, they asked us such wise questions. It showed that though they were not financially literate, they had great financial sense,” Singh said.
Savarkar said that the aim of the project was to make a beginning towards a cashless society. “Cash-free is going to take a very long time. We know that many transactions are conducted in cash even today. But we wanted to show that it was possible for a farmer too to conduct cashless transactions. Today, the fertiliser seller in Dhasai has made a sale of Rs 180,000 in a span of eight days,” he said.
THE BANK
Sridhar Rao, Deputy General Manager of Bank of Baroda, Mumbai Metro South Region, said that over 90% of the swipe machines in Dhasai were found to be making good business. “A local grocery store had transactions worth Rs 120,000 in eight days. Small vendors have been marking transactions from Rs 8,000 to Rs 20,000 per day. All these results are very encouraging,” he said.
In the near future, the bank plans to extend financial services like giving overdraft facilities for farming, education, collection of honey, fishing, land cultivation. For all those who have accounts with the bank, it also plans to provide finance for buying fertilizers, pesticides and other things needed for farming. “We are in the process of putting in all the efforts to make it a future town where people will be well-versed with things related to cards. They will be able to use e-wallets, quick response codes and other such digital financial facilities,” Rao said.
The bank soon plans to open an e-lobby in Dhasai, a first for any rural area. It will have a bunch-note acceptance machine, a cheque clearing machine, a passbook printer, an ATM machine and an account opening machine. “Today, it takes eight days for a cheque to be cleared from Dhasai. In this digital branch, cheque will go for clearing instantly,” said Vijay Singh. One facilitator will be appointed for initial hand-holding. “The traders can deposit their cash in the digital branch at night, and withdraw it the next day morning. There is no risk of keeping cash on you,” he said.
The journey of Dhasai towards financial inclusion is worth watching.