Lasting Impressions

People and Places – two things that I can say I have always been passionate about. This was reason enough for me to be excited about the rural stint that I have recently come back from. Add to that an interesting twist in the form of exploring villages and rural areas with an objective, and you get the perfect recipe for fun, memorable experiences and eye-opening learning.

I’d like to be honest and confess that I was apprehensive when we got a project on banking for the rural stint. It seemed like a tough nut to crack, and it indeed was as we learnt over a period of 8 days. But it was challenging to do, and provided for ample learning and experience in the end. On that account alone I think I’ve accomplished the objective of the stint.

Banking, even for an educated, sophisticated city-dweller is sometimes difficult to understand with its jargon and the many complexities that surround it. Therefore, banking for an illiterate, simple farmer in faraway Neendar or Morija had to be tough to comprehend. Having stayed in the southern part of the country for the better part of my life, I was aware of the development that had taken place in the rural parts of the area. I had left for Jaipur thinking that the same must have happened in other rural parts of the country, even if it wasn’t to such an extent as in the south.

Imagine my surprise and shock when we met 3 families of 6 adults and 9 children, living in huts made of mud and straw and whose combined monthly income was a meager Rs.1500 – or Rs.100 per person per month. What could I ask these people? Should I have asked them the name of the bank they went to? Or what kind of loan they took? However, these people did take loans - to buy food to feed themselves and their children. And then we met farmers who owned land that could have been the size of a small village itself. The difference between the haves and have-nots, rich and poor, couldn’t have been starker.

That family, the children, standing outside their home talking to us, telling us things that we had only heard of and never really believed, is the one lasting image I have come back with.

Gaurav