Meet Chetna Gala Sinha
who grew up in Mumbai and while in college did her Master‘s in Economics from
Mumbai University, drawn to Jayaprakash Narayans brand of socialist politics wherein
she met her husband Vijay sinha, an activist farmer from Mhaswad, and relocated
in 1987.
She speaks about her experience
of living in the village and she had no idea that the house did not have a
toilet and Vijay asked her to go to the fields behind the house and carry a
stick should pigs come following. That’s
what inspired her to do something to bring about a change in this village.
Which brought about a paradigm shift, from down with capitalism slogans to
petitioning for toilets in the house, electricity in the village, and fighting
with bus station masters about three hour delays says sinha.
She suffered her first
set back when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) rejected her application, in 1996
on the grounds that some of the promoting members were non literate. Sinha came
back to the village dejected, but the other villagers pushed her to organize literacy
classes. In five months, Sinha went back to the Reserve Bank of India with a
fresh application and the women in tow.
She is the founder and
chairperson of the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahkari Bank, a microfinance bank which
lends to women in rural areas. She is also the founder and president of the
Mann Deshi Foundation. Mann Deshi Mahila
Sahkari Bank was the first bank in the country for and by rural women to get a
cooperative license from Reserve Bank of India. In the two decades since the
bank was set up with a working capital. It reached over 3,10,000 women
providing them with the financial backing and emotional impetus to become
successful entrepreneurs. She faced the challenge of dwindling customers by introducing doorstep banking and started visiting
villagers at their homes for transactions.
Mann
Deshi provides a powerful platform for women’s empowerment in India. It sets
itself apart by being one of the only organizations focusing on both – access to
finance on one hand, and to financial and business literacy on the other. It
also runs financial literacy classes, where women are taught the ropes of
savings, investing, insurances and loans through modules that comprise games.
Chetna Gala
Sinha is a beautiful example of how every problem has a solution for those who
are daring to look for solutions and explore ways and means to address. For those
who are willing never to give up .. there’s always opportunities to face the
challenges and address them . For
further reading you can check these links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTqxaAjxGQg
The co hosts for this month are Eric Lahti , Inderpreet Uppal, Shilpa Garg, Peter Nena, Damyanti Biswas. Please do visit them.
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Chetna Gala Sinha is indeed a hero Genevive! Banks are beginning to realise that women are responsible and in many (if not most) instances make better investors in the use of micro-financing. Thank you for this amazing story and have a great week! xx
ReplyDeleteTrue Susan I have heard that women are better in handling money; there are now so many CEO's who are women and they do an excellent job, and its wonderful to see women getting empowered and I am hoping for more power to women. Thanks for stopping by:)
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