“It is not hard for rich people, it is the poor who are rejected when all they need is an opportunity”
This was their story, not just of one but of hundreds of poor rural indian women who were denied financial help when they needed it the most.
Chetna Sinha was brought up and educated in the city of Mumbai.
After she completed her graduation, she noticed that there were rural women with no degrees who worked as hard as she did but they didn’t earn the equivalent amount of money.
What’s even worse was that most of these women had never even entered a bank because they earned less and the banks refused to help them.
Chetna realized that it is easier for a rich person to go and open a bank account but it is difficult for poor people especially women to open an account even when all they desire was to save and protect their money.
One particular incident got stuck in Chetna’s mind when a woman who was a blacksmith wanted to buy a tarpaulin sheet for shelter.
The woman needed monetary help but the banks refused to help her.
Chetna understood that no one would help these women so she decided to help them by opening her own bank.
She gathered a few village women, built a team and applied for a bank license.
Reality struck soon, as the village women didn’t know how to read and write the license got rejected.
The women told Chetna that they couldn’t read and write, but they knew how to count.
Chetna decided to teach these women financial terms like capital, interest, principal, etc and after 5 months they re-applied for the license.
The women this time calculated interest rates without a calculator and even faster than the approval officers. Finally, their license got approved.
These women learned how to open bank accounts, how to save money, and how to do business.
With time these women started giving their input to include biometrics in mobile banking applications to enhance the security of the accounts.
It has been more than 20 years since this bank started, the bank now has more than 170000 account holders and has loaned more than 50 million dollars.
This is the story of a bank which was built not for the top 1% of men but for the bottom 1% of women. A bank for rural Indian women which serves as an example of women empowerment and how we can go forward to reduce income inequality in India.
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