#3 | Gauri: Rural Women — Part 2

By Soumya Mukund, Arpit Paurush and Dharmesh Ba

Short Story:

Gauri is a 42-year-old woman born and brought up in a small village near Tumkur district in Karnataka. She stays in her own house in a village with her husband and daughter. Her son has migrated to Bangalore city for his job. She has been working in an Anganwadi as an Aasha worker for almost 25 years. She also runs a business of stitching and tailoring in the side.

The primary source of income is her salary of Rs. 8,000 (111.9$) from Anganwadi[1]. However, her son also deposits money in her account through Google Pay every month. The family spends every penny very judiciously so that they could manage the household expense and save some amount for an emergency.

[1] 
Anganwadi: This comes under women and child well-fare department.Anganwadi is a type of rural child care centre in India. This was started by the Indian government in 1975 as part of the Integrated Child Development Services program to combat child hunger and malnutrition. It means "courtyard shelter" in Indian languages.It is mostly taken care by Asha workers.

Assets:

Conversations from the transcript:

S: Do you have any assets?
G: We have a little. we have a small field of about 5–6 Guntas. We don’t have much land.

S: What do you grow in the field?
G: There are coconut trees we look after it. There is no water, no rain. How will we get harvest?

S: Do you have any gold jewellery?
G: I have just one chain on my neck, nothing else.

Loans:

• Gauri didn’t take an education loan for the daughter because of the fear & question about paying the loan after her marriage. As she thinks the daughter’s decisions to work depend on the husband and the family.
• This Question has raised in Gauri's mind after seeing the incident of her sister. After the marriage of Gauri's niece, her sister had to pay the education loan as the niece's family has not allowed her to work and refused to pay the education loan.
• She doesn’t prefer to take the loan from the bank as in the future they have to repay it which will be an extra load and pressure. She prefers to manage household expenses in the existing budget.
• For an emergency situation, she prefers to make money either from a relative neighbour or Anganwadi colleagues on mutual trust rather than taking a loan from the bank on the rate of interest.

S: Had you taken an education loan?
G: It didn’t occur to me. Suppose the children are unable to secure employment after education or they get married, without being able to repay the loan, we cannot carry the burden on our heads and lose our peace of mind.

S: Do you know the student have to repay the loan after a year? your daughter could get a job in a years time?
No there is no surety about job these days. There was one incident happened with my sister. She had taken a loan of 1.5 lakhs for her daughter’s education. She got married the very next day after completing her education. This caused a lot of problems to my sister. They started being charged interest. The minute you complete education the loan will start charging you interest. At that time the girl was married into a rich family and her husband did not allow her to work. The burden fell on her parents. Now there will be families that take responsibility for their spouse’s education

S: Have you ever felt the need to take a loan?
G: No. I haven’t taken a loan anywhere.

S: Why could you please let me know the reason?
G: The very word loan scares me. We may not have enough money, there will arise a situation when we will have to repay, why even get into such things? We will not have the capacity to endure it. Will the ones who lend money be quiet? They will not. If we are unable to repay, we should manage with whatever money we have. I have never taken a loan anywhere. Not in a single place. Not even in sanghas, as far as I remember.

S: Whom do you reach out to for financial emergencies?
G: Friend circle. There will be some close friends right? It could be Anganwadi workers. We would have helped them in their times of need and they help us when we are in trouble.

Saving & Investment:

• Gauri keeps aside 3/4th of her salary (Rs.8000) for her daughter’s education fee, which parked in her bank account.
• She had recently closed the only R.D they have in the family. She took the decision because of unpaid salary from the last four months & lack of money at the house. Though she didn’t want to break the R.D.

Unit Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP) is a mix of insurance along with investment. From a ULIP, the goal is to provide wealth creation along with life cover where the insurance company puts a portion of your investment towards life insurance and rest into a fund that is based on equity or debt or both and matches with your long-term goals.

Miss-selling

• She invested Rs.30,000 ($419.18) in a ULIP insurance plan by getting influenced by the conversation she had with a LIC agent. She claims that an agent had told the amount would be double in 5 years if we pay Rs: 10,000 (139.73) for three years. However, the LIC agent has claimed the value of the share, which she bought has fallen, and she has received only Rs 23,000 after five years.
• Due to a lack of education and decision making, she got influenced an invested the amount. She feels she had been cheated by the agent when she got a notice that she had missed paying the amount. However, she had paid the amount every year to a LIC agent.
• After visiting the LIC office, she got clarity about the incident.
• She claims that LIC agents visit every village. However, the frequency of visits increases by march budget time. It might be because they want to earn more commission by the end of the financial year.
• Nobody in the family has made an investment, Gauri is curious to know more about the investment plans.

S: How you have managed to pay the college fees?
G: I would set aside 3/4th of my salary for education till it finished. We would keep the money in the bank.

S: Do you have an FD/RD?
G: I had one, but we don’t now. Had to close it because of mounting expenses. I had an RD, I paid for 5 years. It ended on 18th December 2018. As of 2019, I don’t have any FD/RD. It has been 4 months since I received my salary, how will we manage household expense in such condition we could borrow money from people but that also has a limitation. how much we will borrow from them. because of this we have to break the rd in middle.

S: Have you heard of stock market?
G: Share market? I invested and lost my money. I had invested Rs. 30,000 in Money Plus in something called Money Gold. I got back only Rs. 23,000 in hand.

S: How did you hear about share market?
G: From an LIC agent.

S: How long did you invest for?
G: It was there for 5 years. By the end of 5 years the share market value had fallen, we got back only Rs. 23,000 something.

S: What other information did you get regarding share market?
G: This is all. The agent spoke only about this one thing. I do not know much about anything else.

S: Why did you make this investment?
G: The LIC agent said that if we pay Rs. 10,000 every year for 3 years, we will get double the amount by the end of 5 years. So we invested. But by the end of 5 years the share market had fallen so we got back only Rs. 23,000. The money was locked, the agent had to get the money released for us.

S: How did the LIC agent approach you?
G: LIC agents come to almost all villages. They will be making rounds around the March budget time. They need commission around that time, so they will visit our villages. There are lots of LIC agents here.

S: How did you figure out the further steps in the process?
G: I had been to the Kunigal office, there I was told about the procedure. The LIC agent was not telling us anything, he had used up the money we had given him. I once got a notice that I had not paid the amount, I contacted the LIC office at Kunigal to enquire. That’s when I got to know the news.

S: Who else in your family has made investments?
G: No, please educate me about it, I do not know much.

Insurance:

• Gauri and her husband don’t have any insurance like life insurance, property insurance, and vehicle insurance, etc. They don’t have a vehicle at home.
• Gauri's son had paid Rs. 85,000 (1,188.92$) for father’s Kidney operation that happened last year in February 2019. He paid the amount through an Esi card which he got from the company.
• Gauri wants to take health insurance for her husband. They have tried last year when her husband had a kidney stone. It got delayed then they have used the son ESI card.

ESI Card:
An ESI card is a health card given to the beneficiaries enrolled under the Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) scheme. The scheme was rolled out by the Ministry of Labour and Employment to protect the interest of workers against medical calamities.
The ESI scheme is a social security health insurance scheme that entitles beneficiaries and their dependents to avail medical treatment benefits, maternity benefits (in case of women workers), and unemployment cash benefit (only in specific cases).

Technology :

• In the family, there are 3 mobile phones. However, Gauri's son and daughter have a personal mobile while Gauri and her husband share a mobile phone.
• Gauri has bought the phone for her daughter with the scholarship amount.
• Gauri’s son transfers the money every month through google pay into her personal account, and she withdraws the money from the bank.
• Gauri’s son and daughter know to operate atm’s.

Goals and lifestyle:

• Television programs and news in Kannada are the daily soaps of Gauri's and her husband's sources of information and entertainment.
• Her life goal is to build a house and get her children married.
• She is also passionate about serving and helping the women’s community in a village through Buzzindia. Her dream is to make women’s life more convenient in the community.

S: When did you buy the TV?
G: It has been 10–12 years. Almost every house has a TV nowadays. How can there be a house without a TV? There will be a TV even in a hut. For timepass. People will have worked the whole day, they will be bored by the time they come back home, they need some entertainment.

S: What do you watch on TV?
G: Serials. We watch the news. Movies. Comedy Time. However sad we are after a day’s work when we get back home we watch TV to spend time. At least to refresh our minds we will watch some entertainment programs.

Aha Moment:

• Social bonding that Gauri share with the relatives, neighbors, and college in Anganwadi is a huge asset for her, as it paves her at the time of emergency.
• Gauri has a positive attitude due to which she was able to give a good education to her children despite the financial crisis at home.

This interview is broken into two parts. The first part of the interview talks about Gauri’s family, background, income, expenses, and bills.

#3 | Gauri: Rural Women — Part 1

In meanwhile check our other series called ‘Decoding Bharat’, where we interview people from emerging economies in India.

D91 Labs

Credits:

Interviewed and transcribed by
Soumya Mukund

Edited and published for Medium by
Arpit Paurush & Dharmesh Ba

About the research:

This documentation is a result of the in-person interview along with the participants’ consent. The interviews might be conducted in their native languages and translated to English in the best possible way to reach a large audience.

Disclaimer: The names and organisations in this documentation are masked to honour the privacy of the participant.

About D91 labs:

This research was executed and documented by D91 labs. D91 labs is an open-source initiative by setu.co to help Bharat build great fintech products. We organise and publish user research, insights, and frameworks for fintech in India. Please follow us on medium for more exciting stories and insights on Bharat.

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