MUMBAI, AUGUST 25, 2010: On August 25, a meeting on a Financial and Social Inclusion Initiative was organized by the Don Bosco Research Centre, Matunga in collaboration with Sanmitra Trust, Malad Mumbai. The meeting brought together 35 NGOs working with marginalized and vulnerable communities. Speaking about Social Inclusion, Fr. Barnabe sdb, stressed the need for an identity as imperative for these populations, who face situations of human rights violations, arrest, no citizenrary benefits, etc. Hence, a Social inclusion porgramme needed to begin with citizenship identity.
Ms. Kirit Joshi (In-charge) of Unit Trust of India (UTI), Permanent Account Number (PAN) card services explained the various procedures for obtaining a PAN card. Several questions came from the floor of the house as this was an area of a much felt need at the grassroots level. UTI has appointed several Nodal NGO agencies to help in the procedure of making PAN cards for the marginalized populations. Sanmitra Trust (Nodal Agency) along with Don Bosco Research Centre has taken the lead role in helping NGOs with making PAN cards for their beneficiaries. For vulnerable children in institutions having parents the making of the card has less beauraucratic procedures than those that need to qualify their Directors as their guardians.
Moving on to the next session on Financial Inclusion, it was reiterated that here are many schemes through the Government of India which has been made available for the deprived but sometimes cannot get linked up with the needy because of lack of any grassroot linkages. NGOs are that linking medium between the government schemes and the deprived. It’s a preferred route by the Government of India of outsourcing NGOs to reach to these unreached groups.
Mr.Sanjay Pandit and Mr.Rajaram Korgaonkar (Manager UTI), stated that the Unit Trust of India (UTI) has several beneficial schemes besides the PAN card such as Pension schemes for the low income groups to secure their identity and old age respectively. Knowledge and accessing available government schemes for the poor to the NGOs was one of the benefits of this meeting.
Issues such in Financial Inclusion came up that it was important to have small savings today, as our research evidence has shown it helping the family budget, keeping children in education, delaying their entry into the labour force and helping to break the cyclic pattern of living of the past generations. But saving money is not only the prime issue here. It is also important to help generate income through various outsourced methods of companies to maringnalized sections of society. Ms. Prabha Desai (Director Sanmitra Trust) demonstrated how sections of mentally less capable, physically challenged and HIV+ infected groups could be a lesser burden to their families and help the economic situation of their families by contributing to it. Health Insurance, children’s education plans for amounts as low as Rs. 165/- per annum have helped such populations. Hence Financial inclusion is about Savings, Budgeting, Income generation as well as sourcing and accessing Government schemes designed specially for such marginalized populations.
The meeting ended with several NGOs coming forward to the Network coordinators to begin the process of acquiring PAN Cards and micro pension schemes for migrant, casual labour workers and certain vulnerable institutions where the parents can be traced of those children.