The bank with usual process like any other bank accepts food grains and donates it to listed beneficiaries.
Swati Chandra | October 15, 2015
It conducts normal operations of a commercial banks, almost. But it does not deal in cash. This is called ‘Anaj bank.
It collects food grains from donors and gives it to the needy households. The bank issues passbooks, accepts identity cards, have donor’s and recipient’s counters, issue of token numbers, maintains registers and gives account numbers too beside giving a bag to take away the ration.
The unique ‘Anaj Bank’ by Vishal Bharat Sansthan, a NGO working for women and children in eastern Uttar Pradesh, has come up in one of the congested and unpopular lanes of Varanasi. The idea behind the initiative is to save food grains and provide it to poor and under-privileged people.
The bank collected over 600 kg of food grains in first two days of its inception. “We have maintained two kinds of membership, one is donor and other is recipient. While donors get themselves registered voluntarily, recipients are selected based on our survey. Our members are conducting door to door survey of households and making a list of malnourished, poor, underprivileged men, women and children who would be benefitted by the initiative,” informed Rajeev Srivastava founder of the NGO who envisaged the idea of the bank.
A total of 58 beneficiaries, all women, have been selected by the bank. Out of these, five are divorcee, 13 widows, one abandoned by husband, four homeless and 35 malnourished. To support them each of them will be given 5 kg rice, 1 kg atta and salt every month for a year. The bank managed to get 23 donors. Any person can become the donor and open his account in the bank depositing 5 kg of food grain.
What came out during the selection of the beneficiaries was that almost all these women turned out to be malnourished or were found raising undernourished kids. "Most of the women (over 40 years of age) were not even 40 kgs," the NGO said.
Srivastava, who also teaches at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), further said that the bank would provide assistance to one family for one year (the term can be further extended depending upon the condition of the family), once the situation in the family improves, new beneficiaries will be enrolled.
The bank has sent a request even to the prime minister (who is a member of Parliament from Varanasi) to open his account in the bank.
On June 28, Delhi recorded a maximum temperature of 41.3°C, four degrees above the seasonal normal. But the “feels like” temperature, which factors in humidity, showed more than 51°C. What the body experienced was very different from what the thermometer recorded. India`
India today finds itself in an unusual position. At a time when geopolitical conflicts, trade fragmentation, and supply-chain disruptions are reshaping the global economy, the country`s macroeconomic fundamentals remain relatively upwards. Growth remains among the highest in the world, inflation has larg
The Trees of My Country: A Natural History of India in 50 Trees By T. R. Shankar Raman, with illustrations by Manali Patil Aleph Book Company, 284 pages, Rs 1,499
A banyan tree in Munger, Bihar, estimated to be around 700 years old, has been identified as the oldest accurately dated banyan tree, Ficus benghalensis, using radiocarbon dating, a method that relies exclusively on scientific evidence rather than historical records or local lore. Banyan
The phrase "corporate governance" often evokes images of board meetings, compliance checklists, and regulatory filings. For years, governance was viewed primarily as a mechanism to prevent fraud, protect minority shareholders, and ensure regulatory compliance. However, the events of the last deca
India and Japan are opening a new chapter in their special strategic and global partnership with the visit of prime minister Sanae Takaichi, India`s prime minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday, "I had said in the G7 summit a few days ago that, in this environment of
