[Music]
Okay, good afternoon. Thank you everyone for coming.
This is the women and gender and international development discussion
series and this is the first event of our spring series
and this is the first time in this beautiful new room and we're really
excited to be here.
OIRED, the office of international research education and development,
has been hosting these events for several years and it's a way that we
bring in different perspectives of women and gender and we also raise
awareness in the community and campus about international events.
I'd also like to mention before I introduce our speaker that next month
on March 5th we will be having a special panel discussion in the same room
at 12 o'clock where we're going to be talking about cross-cultural
perspectives on women's education and we're going to have international
students from different regions talking about their experiences in
education in their home countries and perhaps some
of the gender-based challenges they faced
and comparing those to their experiences at Virginia Tech.
So please feel free to join us for that event and
if anyone hasn't signed up we have sign ups in both corners here please do that
before you leave. And now it's my privilege to introduce
our speaker today, Pallavi Raonka, who is a first-year doctoral student in sociology.
She got her master's from Tata institute of social science
in India in social work, and she studied under jean dries a well-known Indian
academic and she spent many years working for
different grassroots organizations in chalkland India and she's also
associated with the right to food campaign and her research
here will feed back into that campaign. And today she'll be discussing with us
on the impacts of this pension plan from a grassroots perspective
and especially looking at its impact on single women and elderly
so it's my privilege to introduce you. [Applause]
[Pallavi Raonka] So hi everyone, thank you OIRED friends from there for
organizing this. So today I'm going to present
one of my research study that i did back in 2013
february in india the place that where i conducted the study is the place
where i spent almost two years and living and staying with the tribals
or what we call in india's adiwasi
and this is the place where currently ongoing
maoist movement which is uh sort of one of the big
rebellions that we see in India um is currently going on over there
so um before i start discussing about my study
um i would give you a little background on this field setting because
this has been conducted in a area which is very poor
where the sub uh the malnourishment deaths
are more than sub-saharan african countries
and this is 90 percent rural and tribal area um so this study was
conducted in nine villages and um we interviewed around 81 people
this was conducted in kuti district and
um like you have cities in you us we call them um districts in india
and then one district has like one um districts
have blocks and blocks have panchayats and punjabs have villages and every
panchayat has like 14 000 people which is equal into the
radford population over here um this pen this uh this research was
about look was looking into the implementations of the pension schemes
now these pension schemes are a part of food program in india
they are the pension schemes which helps
kind of people to sustain they are not like the pensions
that you get like after retirement these are pension schemes that you get if you
are under below poverty line in india as we
as i proceed i will talk more about my research
currently there is like an ongoing debate in india and not just in india
you see it across the world that there's like a debate on cutting down on
welfare schemes and one of the major arguments given for
that is it doesn't reach to the intended the
poor it should reach because there's so much of corruption
and everything involved in it uh but what we found
in this study was very interesting apart from other schemes that were
we were monitoring at that time we found this particular scheme pension scheme
was doing quite well and this was a surprise for us
because this is a place which is known known for its um
failure in governance it's ops there's so much of corruption over there
so this scheme doing well was altogether surprised and then we conducted a
study to know why it is like this and also
um there is a debate in india kind of going on to
kind of universalize these pensions for everyone
so this study is kind of was used for advocacy work to support this
look this is going to the intended and it is serving its purpose
um i would start with a brief case study
kolavati devi is an old widow from munda tribe
who lives with her son in jikhi village of siladon
panchayat we asked her do you receive pension every month
because you don't receive pension every month it comes once in four months
she said yes i receive 6.66 a month that is what
she gets um although not sure about her age she is aware that she receives 6.65
66 cents every one and she showed her updated pass book to us
now uh like it's a very common thing if you go
in like villages in india and you ask them about their age people
people won't know their age because the birth certificates are not made
they don't know how old they are so it's very difficult to say
who gets pension and who doesn't get pension but
you don't know your age but you do you do know how much amount you get like
this was a very positive thing and then when she showed her her pass
book which was updated updated was like a very um
like empowering thing for all of us to see because
if you have your password then there is a surety that you're getting your money
if you don't have your password then there are a lot of questions
there might be someone else taking your money so
it's like a common thing like you find villagers and religious people don't
have the password they're with someone else who gets the money for them
and distributes to them and just takes some amount for getting
that money out um essentially the person is the middleman
however she said she goes to the bank only once in three or four months
as it does not make any sense to go every month to collect a meager amount
of six dollars my son accompanies me and in the process
he loses a day's wages too now this is important like because the
banks are so far and she's so old that she can't go alone
so the the son accompanies her and he loses his daily
wage and we are talking about the people
whose lives actually depend on what they earn the whole day that is
what decides what me hum if they would get meal that day or
not so a day wage in india is around um
two dollars round about like two or maybe less than that at times
we have to walk a long distance to find transport
and it's it cost us because each of us like my
my son and me um around six um sorry around one dollar and 20 cents
the queue is in the bank is very long and my son stands for me
as i am unable to do so as the bank is overcrowded the clerks do not have the
time to explain me about the amount in my account now this is very important
because you're talking about people who cannot
read and write how do you ensure that they are getting them
entitlements if you go to the if i go to the bank
like like leave them even i am quite new to the american banking system and i go
and ask the banker what happened to my bank account and if
he is not he doesn't explains me and he's not well
behaved with me well behaves how do i confront that
person how do i talk to that person um i have to ask my son every time to
explain this to me like she's talking about the amount she has a
hazard in a bank with the money received i managed to buy
rice oil and soap for myself and if any money is left over i buy some
clothes so she's talking about how this is this
the amount that she gets it's crucial for her for you know she's buying things
which are like just helping her to uh helping her to i mean these are
things which you require for subsistence like rice
like oil and soap um and that time some money is left then
she buys some um if if there's any money left she'll
buy clothes for her
and kolavathi's stories illustrate both the value of social security pensions
for many widows an elderly person in rural india
and the hurdles they face in securing these meager payments
we met her in the course of the study conducted in february 2013 to understand
the working of two social security schemes
the indra gandhi national old age pension and indra gandhi national widow
pension scheme i'll discuss more about these schemes
what exactly they are as we proceed um
so now uh when we conducted this study the good part is it's reaching to the
intended but the bad news is of course it's
irregular the transaction cost is very high there
is ambiguity in the whole procedure to apply if you
apply there's no clarity when you will get
when it will get sanctioned so all those things are there
um now first i'll discuss the positive findings of this how do we know that
people who are getting these pensions are actually poor
how do we know this because if you look at not everyone who
is below the poverty line is poor and not everyone who is above the poverty
line is not poor in developing countries if you see
especially in india the way the below poverty line is defined as all
is on the basis of calorie intake but what happens is actually when you
look at uh the whole procedure of selecting
people for um below poverty line is like okay
government comes up with saying oh this is the money we have this is the
budget we have let's see how many people we accommodate
a government school teacher would go to your place in summers and every five
months to find out whether you have luxury
goods like electricity or motorbike and stuff like that at home
and that decides basically you fall in that category or not
um but it involves a lot of corruption um so not everyone who's poor it will be
in this thing so to find out whether these
people are poor or not we kind of ask them
questions and uh the data is like this that uh
the 81 people we interviewed out of which 71 percent were women
86 percent were illiterate 58 percent were
widowed 94 percent belong to the schedule tribes
um all of them lived in mud mud houses 47 of them um had no electricity in
their house 90 19 percent had a mobile phone one
person had piped water none of them had fan television
motorcycle luxury not pressure cooker 72 percent were self-employed on their
own agriculture land with the majority owning land of around one acre or less
so essentially what they were doing is subsistence agriculture
um the general profile of the respondent is one of the subsistent tribal farmers
living and working in difficult circumstances
so the second thing that we found out uh was this that they were actually
getting exact amount that they were entitled to
which is a a big big positive thing in india because all
the other schemes that we were monitoring which were employment schemes
or food programs etc none of them actually were getting exact
amount if you're entitled to get two dollars you might get like one
dollar 50 cents or something like that so
getting the exact amount was a very good thing
a very positive thing almost all 98 percent were in possession of the bank
pass book and were aware of this amount
a large 86 percent of the respondent also reported that they
went themselves to collect the pensions from the bank
further 59 said that the attitude of the bank official was helpful
um so um what is happening currently in india that government is trying to
convert most of the food programs into cash like instead of getting food grains
you're supposed to get get cash now if the banks are not in
your reach and the bank officials are not somewhere who are not like who's
whose behavior is not good towards you then how do you approach them
so it's very crucial in these things that the bank should be enough
uh sensitive towards people uh third positive thing that we found was
75 percent of reported 75 percent reported that the pension amount is
shared with the family now it's it's it becomes very important
in context of india that when you say you share it with your
family that means it gives you a bargaining power in the family
like imagine you staying with your brother um with your like son
and you have three for grandchildren and if you can buy the small
things for yourself that gives you that bargaining power you're not
entirely dependent on your son or daughter for that so that most of the
people 82 percent of them said that this gives us bargaining power in the
family um now what are the causes of concern
because this is like the positive things which says okay
this is doing well but what are the causes of
concerns and i feel the causes of concerns are not big enough because
they just need a little political will a little more work from
administration to kind of fix these things
now the causes of concerns are i'll start with
um how this firstly this amount is very little very little and there should
be an increase in that which government of india can actually do it's
not difficult for them and it is it just like
instead of um like like the way we get salary every month like
suppose i'm supposed to get my salary 15 and 30th of every month
i get it once in say three months or four
months and i don't know when is it coming
so the unpredictability is a big concern so i remember meeting a couple
ram mahatma they had no land they lived in belahati village of the la
villa panchayat they could barely walk let
alone walk on anybody's field they did not have children uh who could
support them this sepsis mainly on ram mahatma's
meager pension of rupees 400 um that's dollar six imagine like you
meet a couple and they are both old only one person is
getting a pension and both of them they depend on that
pension amount because they have no one to support them
with this they managed to buy some rice potatoes oil and soap
the old man asked us anxiously will the pension amount we receive
increase as a result of the study we can barely manage with this amount
it is very low we cannot buy even medicines
from this money so i mean you cannot buy except buying rice
to eat you can't even think of buying medicines
or anything else majority of the respondents 72 percent said there was no
specific pattern in the timing of these payments 13 percent were unclear as to
when their pensions were deposited into their account
so what happens is generally um how it works is these tribals have
something called community meetings that they um
have it like every thursday morning 6 a.m
which is like where everyone in the village has to come together and discuss
whatever issues they have and it's a mandatory thing if you don't
do go through they kind of punish you and there's like some amount that you
have to give for community development for that
so if one person out of them goes to the bank and checks oh
there's some money that has come that will tell to the rest of the people
in the village and that's how they will know and that's how the news will go to
other villages and that's how they'll gather together and go
and take their wages uh take their pensions out of the bank
so that's how it was working so they they generally went once in three four
months because the amount was too meager and b not
necessarily you spend so much of money and time to go and
to get it and you you then find that oh it's not there in your bank account only
so to actually find out um when does it comes like
what is the pattern of the pen amount being deposited
uh we kind of filed um
application with the government office over there which is known as right to
food a right to information act in india which says that your you can you you
have access to all the public information
so generally in india if you on like it's the way it works is the minute you
file a rti you would that's a right to
information application either you have a phone call
coming which will be like a call saying oh this will happen to you
please withdraw your application or you would never get ever uh answers
and this area particularly where the study was
conducted it is very very difficult to even get
a basic like information about the fact that when is the money deposited in your
bank account so uh what we got was um
that what we got from there was when we submitted this to the block office
they clarified us that the administration has had transferred
pensions pension money to the bank regularly
every month however there is no record of any fixed data of
this month transfer the circle officer added that any
further delay in transferring money to individual pensioners
would be the responsibility of the bank the bank refused to provide any
information on it it was like we first went to the
government office they said we do it we just send it to the bank you ask the
bank people we just send like the whole amount to the bank together for like
six months we went to the bank and asked them and bank refused to us
now this is the state of affairs like this was with we
like i was working with like whole right to food campaign which had so many
activists and academicians involved um and we were like educated enough we
knew our rights but what about the people who do
not know their rights if they want to ask how do they ask
so that's the question uh high transaction
cost was another concern um sita devi
whom we met in one of the villages 70 years old has three sons and one
daughter her son have migrated in search of work
and her daughter is married she lives alone and has not gone to
collect her pensions for the past seven months
as she had not been able to save enough money to pay for the transport cost
she complained that the bank is always overcrowded the last time she went to
the bank she was unable to withdraw money for
for this reason and had to return empty-handed so she didn't go for seven
months because she didn't have enough money to
go um so what's interesting is um we asked
people how much do they travel to go to the
bank and how much time they spend so what we got was this um
the average distance to to what they traveled was 22.5 kilometers
to reach a bank and that was one way uh average time taken by them was 10.7
hours round trip to go to the bank and dollar
one for the round trip um even then sixty
percent of this pensioners reported that they had to
come back empty-handed and make more than one trip
to collect their pensions so yeah so this was the thing i mean
this was the condition and now we want to convert like there's
a lot of pressure from the world bank at the moment to
convert other food programs also into like the
cash like instead of food you get cash so this is the state of affairs and this
is uh um yeah i mean um
now i'll talk about ex the problem of exclusion how people get
excluded and what are the reasons like how
why does this exclusion takes place
um the most serious issue is the large
numbers of widows and elderly person being excluded from the pension scheme
there are two possible forms of exclusion the person may not be
on the bpl list that is the below poverty line list
which is a official exclusion or he or may
may be deprived of pension in spite of being
on bpl list which is arbitrary exclusion so what happens is every time there are
elections in this particular state it never had uh stable governments
every time a government comes and there's a new below poverty line
list so there are like five below poverty line list
and they're like different different names so how do you know who is in the
list now this is again a important reason for
concern because um if if if you go and say oh i
am below poverty landless and i meet the age criteria i should get
pension they will the government official will tell you no
your name is not there so how do you do so that opens more more
like spaces for corruption so you kind of
have to bribe them because your name would be if
it's not in this list that would be another list or he can only tell you
which list your name is so that way so that
um so
so again if you are in the bp list again if your name is confirmed uh not
necessarily you'll get this pension because the pension itself the scheme
itself comes with its own like criteria who should get it on who
who should not so we um kind of to find out that
we again further like um question people about that that how did you get
your pension sentient because people who got that how
did you get it um so i remember one of the women
um asked me during this that not like um this study that i've applied so
many times for this pension and i never get it
and this actually went to and that's that was the reason why we further went
and um kind of we wanted to explore why so
these repeated questions spoke volumes about the confusion surrounding the
application process of the old age and widow pension
scheme there is a confusion um about the two
main eligibility criteria bpl and age confusion on the later creates further
confusion about the appropriate type of pension
or required transfer from one pension to another pension
so if you are for days and above and you're single and you have
a bpl card you get this pension but if you don't
know your age how do you prove your age how do you say how old you are no one
knows how old you are and from 40 if you become like so this
is for the single women pension but if you are um if you want to be
counted under the elderly pension and there has to be increase
like once you move uh from if you're above 88 years of age
from the pension that you're getting six dollars it increases to ten dollars
so how do you how it is how does it takes place so no one knows your age
so how do you get transferred from that 40 to 80 from 80
and then 18 above so no one knows that and that's that's quite ambiguous
um how the government work like the administration works no one knows
uh with respect to the bpl status as an eligibility criteria
there are three bpl list in the use in jharkhand
lack of initiative on behalf of the administration to
clarify this among pensioners has not helped at all
several said that the that being a bpl household was not required
to apply for pensions
none of the respondents knew the correct age this means that
when they turn 80 and the pension entitlement increases from 400 to 700
that transition may be delayed this confusion leaves
room for bank officials or middlemen to siphon off the additional rupees
additional money without the knowledge of the pensioners
although the age of the on the water id is followed
lack of clarity about one's own age led to
people getting wrongly included and excluded
um we came across many instances where the actual age based on physical
appearance was clearly not reflected in the voter id cards for instance
etwa munda in the jiki village was very old and could barely walk but his voter
id said it he was 55 and he was not
included in the pensioners list even after making repeated attempts
so there are other types of exclusions that also i can talk about at the moment
but because the time is less i would uh
further go ahead and discuss other things that we found in the study but
there are various types of um exclusions that take various reasons
to lead to you the exclusion that why you are not being
part of that why you cannot like have this pension
again another problem was the lack of clarity in the procedure
so um uh if i apply today say
what is the procedure to apply like for ins in instance i'm applying for my
admission in school i know these are things
that are required now there is no no way that
you can know what exactly what exact things you want you can only go to the
government official make him said and ask that person
oh how do i apply there is no fixed time to apply
there is no fixed time when it gets sanctioned there there's no fixed time
to know like there's no mechanism of knowing that whether you
got it or not so these were the other problems
that we faced and then um
what i think is more important about this whole study was what we realized is
generally there has been a lot of um like because we found we found that
there was a high awareness of entitlements like how much amount that
people should get and about the bank passbooks and how the
procedure of getting the money from the bank works
and that was a prime reason of this scheme working really properly in these
areas because when you go collectively in the
bank to take out your money you know your entitlements you know your
right and you can assert yourself and say oh this is the amount i want
so generally these people used to go in groups and ask the bank official for the
money so this leaves no space for money
getting money being you know siphoned off by
someone else and um it's basically you can just see
it in the context of a bottom-up approach
where people are when they're aware of their entitlements
they can go and assert their rights and they can get it and that leads to
better implementation of these schemes in this area
now the it was a very positive experience to conduct the study
and uh to find out that if this scheme is working there could be other schemes
in that area also that can work properly if
a little government uh if government is interested and
if there is little political will involved another
at the same time because people were aware of this thing
so irrespective of the fact irrespective of whatever problems they were facing
but because they were aware of their entitlements no matter what who
whosoever government it was they still knew that this is what we
were supposed to get and they could ask for it
so yeah okay
um
um so we have another 10 or 15 minutes if anyone has any questions and we can
make this more of a discussion as well yeah and yeah oh do you want to talk
about the photos first no we can take questions
oh sorry yeah um go ahead oh sorry thank you very
much interesting to me i have a um sort of a public and nutrition
background and so so the delivery services stuff is something that i i
take interested and one thing that struck me um earlier
talk um was that this this pension program
although you highlighted a lot of sort of challenges to it
um was at least more successful in comparison to other programs by
that people got more money especially in comparison to other
the food all the food programs other employment schemes
um is that simply because they're they're the recipients
were more educated on how much they are or what other reasons
are there or this being slightly more successful
at getting them delivering the money to the population
um there are two reasons a of course the awareness was high about the
entitlements and b because it did not involve too
many bureaucratic you know levels it was straight away
coming from the center to the state and state was transferring
uh via the uh block officer to the bank so it was just straight away transfer
and so why why would you say that the population
was more aware of this than other uh
because there were more pensioners and also because it was working
um they gave us a very uh simple thing like you
have a card and this is the money that you're supposed to get so it was a very
simple thing to get like
because other things involve like for instance um
if you look at the employment schemes that you have in india
so you are entitled to work say 100 days upon skilled work in rural areas now you
go and do some work there would be official
who would be monitoring you and that would say okay you are supposed
to dig so much of land but i think the and
he might not measure properly measured
properly i mean it depends on the officer and then he'll mark you and so
okay he's done this much of work and that work would go that the amount
of work that you have done that particular firm would be deposited
in the uh the block office in the block office
would further send it to the district office for like
money and then this is this goes to the bank so when is the money going all that
so it's very ambiguous the rest of the things are quite ambiguous so yeah
maybe clarity and simplicity
could you talk a little more about the move
from the right to food and like food and fuel
distribution to the money to the cash distribution uh
i understand so it's i guess it's more uh
when it has cash there's more corruption possibilities
i'm assuming but what i mean
for food and cash so um since i mentioned before i started this
presentation that the mall nourishment that's among
children are more than what we see in sub-saharan african
countries in that context it becomes very important that you get food grains
because imagine you are not being paid
money like if you don't get money you cannot buy food grains in that case
also um another problem when we talk to women because women and children
are the people who will get affected whether you want food or cash
they said food because they said if we have cash the higher chances
that we spend it on other things like you know other important things
but if we have food grains in the house that at least assures that we get like a
meal in a day they're entitled to get some 35 like the
if you're a family which falls into below poverty line you're entitled to
get 35 kgs of rice so first thing was this second thing was
this that um of course you can spend money on other
things then india's societal structure is like that
that it's generally men who goes to the bank not the women so if i if my husband
goes to the bank and takes out the money that
high chances that he will end up you know spending that money in like
alcohol and other things which is a very common thing that happens
then at least this amount of food is ensuring that
i get some food grains in my house so yeah
i know another problem with cash is this that the cash is not
linked the cash that government is trying to you know again and again
like because they want to change it from food to cash so again and again the
idea of supporting this is like um they are they they are doing this
because they're saying like say for instance pension is doing well
so the money for like this thing can also do well but
if this is not linked to the inflation that is happening how do you do that
and again thing is because these are so remote places there are no
um shops like to buy food what the government is talking about i don't know
which world they stay in but for kilometers and kilometers you do not
find any food grain shop very easily most of the food grains that
is used by these people is the food grains that they grow in their
own small land they have that's kind of related to a question i
had um other kind of uh strategies for livelihood subsistence you mentioned a
good portion of them have guard land um are there other kind of
strategies for subsistence and are are any of those
uh other you know land is that is that threatened in any way
by whatever interest that might have for that land
yeah so the first part of the question is
the subsistence practices they have apart from
food grains food that they grow they grow once in a year that's paddy
and they generally rare kettles at home
so that they use both for food and ceremonies and rituals whatever they
have and then they have something called
forex forest collect that they do there's like
they can go to the forest and like collect some forest produce which are
like woods for making food or
maybe stuff like um like um like there are what we call as
tobacco leaves in india teen dupatta where you get
it like and they roll like cigarettes out of it and there are other fruits
medicines that they grow that they have in the forest
so all of that so that's the subsistence thing and the second part of the
question about the land there's like of course there's so many
development projects like the big dams or the mining agencies
or any big project that comes in and there are chances that you lose your
land and the millions of people who are
present in india it's between around 2.5 to 3 millions of
people who have been displaced because of these things so they've lost their
lands and livelihood because land is the way they earn their
food so yeah i just wanted to discuss about these
photographs a little because these photographs are about uh that i
took these are about the various food
programs that they are i mean that we have in
india so um
yeah so this picture of us is of a student who is going
to what we call in india's icd center integrated
child development scheme which which center is almost in every
village which assures not just the food but also they educate
these small kids who are below one to six years who are between one to six
years and they provide nutritional support to lactating mothers
and pregnant mothers and educate them about it so what's
interesting is to see that these these are like like free we call it
pre-nursery school in india i don't know what you call
so so what's interesting is it's a very common thing not to have books but to
have that plate in your bag like you know but she's happy
she'll get at least one meal a day this is again a
picture of our icd center where students are sitting and eating food
and this is and and and this is this thing has actually
very has been very helpful in terms of cast in india because in india there is
a thing that higher caste people and lower
caste people don't sit together and eat but in schools they're made to sit
together and eat but because irrespective of higher caste low cast
you'll be poor so you're going to these public schools so you have to sit
together and eat and this is a very positive thing
um currently we have a lot of um um a lot of activists in india civil
society is advocating of having eggs in the meals and this is
like one of the schools we found that they were giving regular
like eggs once in a week so it's not in all the states but few states like tamil
nadu and kerala which have higher human development index can are doing
this um and now what's so exciting about this
is like every school in india has something like this written where you
know which day what food you'll get so the students know what they what food
they'll get so they go to the principal and
the school teacher if they don't get that food or they don't get food and
like they're like we're supposed to get this food so this is mandatory this has
to be in like every school and there's something that i found in every
school which is very exciting um again this is how you
distribute oil and food you're entitled to get some
35 kgs of rice every month and some kerosene oil which is
required for basic subsistence so this villager is just collecting his part of
oil um again because the public distribution
system for food has a lot of corruption involved in
india because uh what will happen is like the way money comes um but if you
if you have like a truck of food coming so there are like chances and which um
generally happens is like the food the food sacks basically gets
stolen like what happens is the truck driver might sell it to someone
or the storage people so all of that to stop all of this
one of the state which was the neighboring state where i did this study
again that was a marvelous hit mama's crit
area and had almost nothing working over there but the food scheme worked because
the state government at that point kind of made a lot of changes in this
food scheme they bought brought this cooperative societies
wherein people of the village or the women formed this cooperative stores to
store the food to reduce the the
you know stealing or setting up this food grain
so this was one of the very positive things and this has been like
became a role model in india which other states are also trying to do
and this is a school in india where um they're like
multiple classes going on together in like one classroom
now the positive thing is now we have schools in every village
at least we have school building at least we have the midday meal that i
earlier showed you the picture is running
but the condition of education still remains very bad because
it's like multiple class multiple classes sitting together for five
classes and one teacher teaching you um yeah but then at least the
infrastructure has come earlier 10 years back we did not even have that
um this is a photograph of um employment scheme of the unskilled labor
that where you entitled to get 100 days of work so these people are working over
there they're supposed to work let's say eight
hours uh and then um their provisions are first aid and
drinking water and the shade to sit on the worksite
which is a very positive thing uh and then but then not necessarily you
work also you get your wages it's like it's one of those schemes where
government of india is like trying to it's not supporting it it's not very
supportive about and maybe we can discuss why um there's a women
who has a card which is quite happy about it
and then this is making a card is like full of hassles you need a water id card
you need like a bpl card for everything you need a
public distribution card you need a pension card you need so many cards you
need a health card so how do you make them everything
involves a lot of corruption again the office bank offices are very
far from the villages at least you travel around about 30 kilometers to
reach them um this is a photograph of a small um
center which is there in almost every village where a doctor comes
not a doctor a nurse basically or a little more trained
person who will do your regular checkup when you're pregnant or lactating
do you guys have any questions
no have there um been any
any attempts to do sort of like mobile banking through cell phones or
even like um using biometric data to keep track of all this i know there's
some organizations pushing that in india can
you tell me about your experience or what you think would be effective
um so uh the two things mobile banking and all of
these things cannot work properly because there is
absolutely no network in those areas for mobile companies and electricity
to charge your phone and biometrics the government attempted but it did not
but it failed because of a lack of infrastructure problems that you have
because for biometrics to get implemented you need an infrastructure
enough to enroll people into it and again the same problems came the
bank offices are very far government offices
you don't know you don't have enough administration to administer it and all
of that
and also it requires a good chunk of money so um
i mean because we already have a bank system in place so the
people who were debating about it said why not to
why do you want to separate biometric system for this
you know why not to put things which you already have
in place and then see what happens
government connected or are they um are there lots of different uh
earlier till before the liberalization in 90s we had
fully controlled government banks now what we have are partly government and
partly private the government still have
certain things like they have to open remote areas and all
of this but currently what is happening is which is
not in the international media scrutiny at all is like 50 percent
of india india is under insurgency in that the case you cannot
force the government to open banks in those areas
so yeah
like you have the maoist movement going in the central bank and this little
certain then northeast part of india has other conflicts going on
and then the jammu kashmir is the famous like
infamous thing that we all know the pakistan
india thing and then you have a lot of insurgents in that area also
because they want to separate kashmir
now
you