Digital Swaraj Fellowship: Revisiting the Journey of DEF’s Flagship Programme
Abhinav Pandya is a SoochnaPreneur (Information Entrepreneur) from Guna, Madhya Pradesh. He has been working on the ground to ensure the community’s safety from the corona virus by delivering money to their homes from the schemes that the government has put in place for them.
By Abhinav Pandey
Abhinav Pandya is a SoochnaPreneur (Information Entrepreneur) from Guna, Madhya Pradesh. He has been working on the ground to ensure the community’s safety from the corona virus by delivering money to their homes from the schemes that the government has put in place for them. Many of them, whom Abhinav is helping, didn’t even know that such schemes existed; he informs them of their entitlements and helps them avail the same online. By providing banking services at doorstep, he is helping the villagers practice social distancing, the most important requirement to stop the spread of the virus. He made a few observations faced by the community members to avail the government entitlements and how Abhinav along with other SoochnaPreneurs managed to tackle the issues.
Here is a translation of his observations which were originally written in Hindi. The original text is appended below.
In the Guna district of Madhya Pradesh, villagers are forced to travel 5 to 10 kms to avail the ‘Pradhan Mantri Garib Yojana’ to the nearest banks from their villages. They are eligible for schemes such as the “Jan dhan” account which gives them Rs. 500 and the “Ujjwal Yojana” which gives them Rs. 799.50. In some cases, travelling by foot is the only option and to even more distant locations than just within the 5 or 10 km radius. If not by foot, the villagers have to go by two-wheelers taking along another family member.
As a consequence they spend most of their day in front of banks, harangued by thirst, hunger and fatigue from standing in queues in the heat. Alongside all of this, we witness the ironic but inevitable destruction of social distancing caused by the crowds gathering to collect the meagre sums.
And yet we see that most people are unable to avail the schemes As a consequence Rajaram ji and I called an urgent meeting with the other SoochnaPreneurs in the area on the zoom app.
During the discussion, the members presented their own problems in their respective fields and keeping the bank and commute issues in mind, we devised effective measures to resolve them.
As a result, I asked Rajaram ji to contact bank ID distributors amongst whom we spoke to the director of Eko India Finacial Services Pvt Ltd and he informed us about the possibility of using our IDs through mobiles, laptops, as well as desktops; although activating each ID would cost Rs. 1154/-.
So when we told him about the work done by DEF and our intent of registering 10 IDs at a time, he agreed to charge Rs. 954 per ID. Thereafter, we discussed it with our team and we decided to go ahead and register these IDs and Shyam Sharma (Myana), Rani Kushvah (Mata Mudara), Naval Kushvah (Chachauda), Santosh Ojha (Araun), Purushottam Chhakad (Umadi), Bunty Kiror (Jhagad), Bhure Singh Kevat (Radhagarh), Rani Yadav (Budadongad), Rajaram Dhakad (Bhidra) were registered as bank correspondents.
The advantage derived from this was that being part of the DEF community, these people were easily able to withdraw money and give it to other members. The elderly especially have benefitted substantially from this.
गुना जिले में लोक डाउन में ग्रामीणों को “प्रधानमंत्री गरीव कल्याण योजना” के पैसे निकालने बैंको में जाना पड़ रहा है जिसमे जनधन खाते के 500/- ओर उज्वला योजना के 799.50/- के लिये ग्रामीणों को 5-10 किलोमीटर या उससे भी अधिक दूरी पैदल चल कर एक तरफ से बैंक तक पहुंचना पड़ रहा है या फिर अपने परिबार से किसी को साथ लेकर गाड़ी से जाना पड़ता है जिसमे उनको दिनभर बैंको के सामने भूखे,प्यासे खड़े रहना पड़ता है और बैंक में लोगो की अधिक भीड़ के कारण सोशल डिस्टेंस की धज्जियां उड़ती हुई हम सभी देख पा रहे है। और उसके बाद भी सभी लोगो को पैसे नहीं मिल पा रहे है जिसको देखते हुए मैने ओर राजाराम जी ने एक अर्जेंट zoom app के माध्यम मीटिंग की, जिसमे जिले के सभी सूचना प्रेंन्योर साथी DEF परिवार को शामिल किया गया। चर्चा के दौरान साथियों ने अपने – अपने क्षेत्र की समस्याओ को बताया जिसमे बैंक की समस्या और लोगो के आवाजाही को ध्यान में रखते हुये कुछ अच्छा कदम उठाने की बात सामने आयी, जिसको देखते हुये मेने राजारामजी को बैंक आईडी वितरको से बात करने के लिए बोला, जिसमे (EKO INDIA FINACIAL SERVICES PVT LTD) के संचालक से हमारी बात हुई और उसने हमको बताया की हमारी ID मोबाईल तथा लैपटॉप ओर डेस्कटॉप पर आसानी से चल जाती है इस ID को लेने के लिए एक ID के लिये 1154/- का खर्च आएगा। जव उनको DEF के कार्यो के बारे में बताया और एक साथ 10 ID लेने की बात कही तो उन्होंने कहा की हम आपको 954 रु. तक एक ID दे सकते है, तो हमारी इस विषय पर सभी टीम से बात हुयी और टीम ने ID लेने की बात कही जिसमे श्याम शर्मा-म्याना, रानी कुशवाह-माता मुडरा, नवल कुशवाह-चाचौड़ा, संतोष ओझा-आरौन, पुरुषोत्तम धाकड़-ऊमरी, बंटी किरार-झागर, भूरे सिंह केवट-राधोगढ़ ,रानी यादव-बूडाडोंगर,राजाराम धाकड़-भिड़रा को ID दिलबाई गयी, जिसका फायदा ये हुआ कि अब ये सभी DEF के साथी समुदाय में रहते हुए, समुदाय के लोगो का पैसा आसानी से निकाल कर दे रहे है। जिससे बुजुर्ग लोगो को बहुत मदद मिल रही है।
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