Why people should know about finance ? Part 1
We are all young and well-educated and very well aware of the consequences that our society is facing. Here I am talking about the low-level society that is deprived of the basic necessities that we take granted for in our middle and high-class society. And from these middle and high-class societies comes some people with their open hands to help the needy, to serve them with whatever they can. Yes, I am here referring to all the beautiful hearts who started NGOs and the Charitable Institutions who are working selflessly for the society. More than 2 million Non-Profit-Organizations are operating in India, which means, one for every 600 people.
Now you see, 2 million organizations and still the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.
https://qz.com/india/1611326/india-has-been-hostile-to-ngos-for-decades-modi-made-it-worse/
Most of the NGOs are focused on the health, education, and development of the rural areas. But are they really getting beneficial for the poor people? When it comes to financing, many organization are specially designed to provide accessible loan options to the poor, but is it only about providing them loans or is it only about opening their bank accounts? Most of the people in rural areas still rely on informal banking methods. But the question is WHY, why do they don’t have bank accounts.
75% of rural households in India have a monthly income of less than ₹5,000 ($79), which means 75% of rural India survives on ₹33 per day, 51% of households make a living from manual labour, 28%(over 50 million) of households do not have mobile phones or any form of communication. So in such a scenario can we think of having bank accounts of people with such income.
And the problem starts here, with such less income, they rarely have access to good education and proper medical facilities, and without education and health, it becomes difficult to earn and survive. But in such circumstances, we have many NGOs available, who are willing to provide proper education to the children, and readily available to assist in the health-related problems. The problem is rural areas is so vast that you concentrate on one, and the other is out of control. They don’t have any family planning and which severely hampers the health of the women, the small children are malnourished because they cannot afford for the kids. Malnutrition caused 69% of deaths of children below the age of five in India in 2019. And in this, the little earning of the people gets drained. Everyone talks about education, health facilities, women empowerment, rural development, sanitation facilities, etc etc., but no one talks about the main thing, FINANCE.
Everyone talks about providing financial help to the rural people, but is it only providing financial help?
It is not only about how much you are earning per day, but more about how are you utilizing that earning.
But that doesn’t mean that for saving money you need to have lots of money, saving even a small amount of the money today, can prove out to be fruitful after a certain period of time in future.
Because if anyone is earning less then their expenses will also be less, so no matter how much anyone earns, saving is important for everyone and more important for poor people because mostly these people earn on daily basis. There’s a real-life example that is important for all of us. A girl once I was speaking to was telling me that “the canteen staff takes ₹12 for the same milk packet that one can get for ₹10 when you walk a little outside the hostel gate, and I usually go for the shop with ₹10 milk, for saving those ₹2.” I surprisingly said, “2 rupaye bachake kya Hoga” and her reply completely shook me off, “Ha, wo to hai, lekin wahi ₹2 . Aap 1 mahine bachaoge, to aapke pas ₹60 , ho jayenge”. So ultimately, it is all about how much you can save today, for your tomorrow.
I don’t think that the people in villages only need financial assistance, but what they mostly need is the financial knowledge. Something that can help them in utilizing their crucial earnings and tactics by which they can invest and save their money. You can help someone with the financial aid, but how long, until and unless they understand the criteria of saving, investing and spending, they would go into the problem of frequent cash problems again and again.
And lack of financial knowledge often make them a victim of financial frauds, so what’s the point of giving them money if someone can steal from them?.
In India many people get cheated because of the lack of financial knowledge, thus despite many government initiatives, the lives of poor are still the same from a long time and they keep on becoming a victim of financial frauds, and many people are just unaware of the fact that they have already become a victim.
Many incidents are happening every day where someone is being cheated, here are the links of some of them:
The Yojana of Micro Finance and the measures of providing loans to the poor is definitely a good motive, but finance is not limited to only loans for the poor, it is much more. The most important challenge here is giving financial knowledge to rural India. Well, the surprising fact is that approx. 2 million NGOs operating in India, and nobody bothers about making Rural India financially literate.
If people want to change their life then apart from learning for money, they should also learn about money. Because the lack of financial knowledge can do so worse that, even if you have become a victim of financial frauds, you won’t realize it until its too late to recover from it.
