To bring awareness about dangerous consequences of borrowing money from unorganised financial sector, HDFC Bank Ltd has launched an educational video film called ‘Dhanchayat’.

As part of HDFC Bank’s swachch banking initiative for rural India the film shows methods of clean and convenient banking.

The Dhanchayat video vans with micro-ATM’s will have biometric facility to enable instant e-KYC (know your customer) using Aadhaar. The vehicles will travel across rural areas spanning east, west  south, north and central India.

The aim is to educate the rural population about the importance of transparency in dealings as also the dignity and self respect of the individual in borrowings. The vans will be stationed at typical assembly points in villages such as haats, bazaars, melas and village panchayats

In line with the government financial inclusion, the programme was launched by Aditya Puri, managing director of HDFC Bank and deputy managing director Paresh Sukhtankar.

The vans will cover 5,000 villages across the country and encourage local population to join the organised banking sector. The initiative will be scaled up later.  “Iit is a board mandated objective at HDFC Bank to support inclusive growth. We believe this cannot be achieved in an environment where misinformation and a lack of familiarity with the organised finance is pushing people towards unorganised sources of finance” said Suktankar.

Not only Dhanchayat reinforces Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, but it also will help impact the initiative the way it should.

“Often customers have accounts, they do not operate them. Similarly people may have accounts but not be aware of services available and don’t know if they should or should not transact. Dhachayat would probably help overcome some of those inhibitions and make those accounts instruments of financial inclusion. This is about banking as against informal sector which is part of their community   and creating awareness and demand so people can benefit out of it,” he said.