Banking tools for rural India a big hit in West

A UN report says two technical innovations — a voice and finger print navigated ATM and medical help system through satellite based consulting for rural poor — has found resounding success in the West, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 29, 2008, 24:13:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Two technologies, indigenous to India in banking sector, are proving a successful counter to bank frauds in the Western countries.

A United Nations (UN) report released on Monday said the two technological innovations — a voice and finger print navigated automated teller machine and medical help system through satellite based consulting for rural poor — has found resounding success in the West.

“The design of these ATMs was primarily aimed at attracting rural folk in India. But, the international banking companies have found that the machine can help in checking illegal withdrawal of money from ATMs in a big way,” said Sahba Sobhani, lead author of the report, Creating Values for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor.

The ATM facilities, developed by ICICI Bank and Citibank, with fingerprint identification and voice-enabled navigation was to attract illiterates in rural India towards private banks.

The UN report pointed out that the innovative use of technology has now helped companies in setting up similar centres in Europe, America and in the poor Africa world. Another Indian initiative that has been mentioned by the report was of Narayana Hrudayalaya, a Bangalore-based organisation. The organisation has started use of satellite to provide medical help to poor in rural parts of India. It has set up tele-health centres, allowing doctors to help the patients living in far-flung areas.

The report also highlighted how the privatisation of water supply system in Tirupur in Tamil Nadu helped the poor to get regular quality tap water. The Bindeshwar Pathak’s Sulabh toilets concept has been termed in the report an innovative business model to provide healthy livelihood to 60,000 scavengers in India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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