By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: Meet Md. Ayyub, who is a rickshaw puller and stays in Okhla, a Muslim dominated locality on the suburbs of the national capital. He is one of the thousands Muslim migrants, who come to Delhi in search of livelihood, from Muslim dominated districts of the backward states like Bihar and West Bengal and Assam.
The fact that Ayyub is a migrant, who shifted to Delhi, only last year, has ensured that Ayyub doesn’t have voter ID, nor a PAN card or any other identification proof. But still he boasts of having a bank account in a nationalized bank.Courtesy, Human Welfare Trust and Indian Bank.
The Human Welfare Trust (HWT) and the Jamia branch of Indian bank have taken the initiative to get zero account balance saving bank accounts, opened for rickshaw pullers staying in the vicinity of Jamia Nagar and Abul Fazal in Okhla. The collaboration on behalf of HWT for this scheme is a part of its Vision 2006-16 programme, which has several other schemes for the socio-economic empowerment for marginalized sections like rickshaw pullers.
Indian Bank Jamia Branch Manager TS Mohammad with Md. Ayyub, Rickshaw puller
Ayyub was the first, but he was of course, not the only one to be given the passbook along with his ATM card in the month or Ramadan last year, when this scheme was started by the branch manager of Indian bank, Jamia branch, TS Mohammad. Till now two more rickshaw pullers have got their account opened in the bank.
The bank account has benefited Ayyub in more ways than one. Earlier, Ayyub used to give his money to a local friend of his who used to save Ayyub’s money for him, which he used to take back just before going home. Now there is no tension of keeping money at some body else’s place.
“Now I am confident that my hard earned money is safe with me in my account. I just go to bank and submit my money. Whenever I use the ATM card, I feel thrilled because never in my life I have used an ATM card, let alone having a bank account,” Ayyub, told TwoCircles.net over phone from Malda his home town.
This is the first time that Ayyub has got a bank account ever in his life, showing lack of access to bank facilities to Muslims in particular in Malda, a minority concentrated district.
The account has made Ayyub confident about his identity, in spite of being a poor migrant from Malda district of West Bengal. He has got at least one document in the form of the bank passbook, which he could further use to get his voter ID made.
“The bank account has given me an identity as well, because I am going to use the bank account to get several other important identification cards made,” Ayyub added.
Financial inclusion of the marginalized and minorities is on the agenda of reserve bank which has issued several guidelines to issue schemes to bring the poor section of the society into the financial mainstream by giving them access to banks.
According to TS Mohammad the branch manager of Indian bank, this scheme for the rickshaw pullers was launched as a pilot project by his bank and HWT in 2011 only and it met with a pretty decent response to start with. More than fifty forms have been filled up and only three have been opened till now.
Interestingly the bank relaxed the norms for these labors in terms of requisite of documents for opening accounts as they are migrants and don’t have any local identification proof.
Md. Saleem, the national co-ordinator of Vision 2016 told TCN that after getting a good initial response, now the bank and HWT will speed up their activities to get more and more rickshaw pullers open their account.
But the insiders tell TCN that because of lack of awareness, there is also a sense of hesitation on the part of rickshaw pullers to respond to the scheme. They think that for migrants from state like Assam and West Bengal where there is an issue of illegal Bangladeshis, getting registered in a government agency might have adverse repercussions on their otherwise peaceful life.