In a mission to provide literacy, at least enough to handle personal financial transactions, Stuti Charan, DM Chhotaudepur, has initiated SWATAH. The ongoing camps are aimed at training tribal women in operating ATMs and filling in withdrawal and deposit slips. In its first month, the camp has already enabled 1,250 women.
Ushaben Navsinhbhai Rathva, a resident of Dhandhoda village in Chhotaudepur district of Gujarat, had a bank account but was not aware of the procedural requirements. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Jan Dhan Yojana almost everybody has a bank account but like Ushaben, few know how to operate independently.
The housewife who also works on agriculture fields, shared: “Earlier, I was unable to fill in the cash/cheque deposit form at banks. Each time I had to seek help.” Not only was the time-consuming, she was often left without any volunteer. “Mostly people were in a hurry and often they filled the form incorrectly. This meant standing in the line all over again,” she recalls.
Sharing a similar story is Nilam Bhaveshbhai Rathva, a resident of Gungavada village. “I never withdrew from the ATM myself. I used to write my ATM pin on a piece of paper and then sought people’s help to withdraw money from my account. I always suspected that I could easily be duped by anyone. However, now I am independent.”
SWATAH (Smart Women Adopting and Harnessing Technology) is aimed at educating women on basic banking operations. The brain child of IAS officer Stuti Charan, DM Chhotaudepur, she explained: “We are targeting all the women beneficiaries of government schemes – mostly SHGs, women in agricultural activities, members of milk cooperatives, ASHA workers, anganwadi workers etc. A basic level of literacy is however required to be part of the camp.”
Special camps are organised according to the availability of the women. At any given time, about 40 tribal women are part of one session. Basic operations such as cash deposit and withdrawal, operating passbook, writing cheques and using the ATM are mapped. “Bank correspondents are training women to fill the forms. With no ATMs in many villages, these women are being trained in withdrawing cash from the Point of Sale (PoS) machines. Awareness is also being spread on cybercrimes and online thefts,” added Charan.
To gauge the effectiveness of the training, the women are asked to perform a task before the training and one upon completion. The district administration has trained over 1,250 women so far.
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