NAGALAND: Taiwang Konyak walked miles as a youngster to barter vegetables for salt. Today, he is glad to see his grandson buy a mobile phone with money drawn from a village bank.
From being an exotic location for anthropologists to be subsumed in the banking system, Mon district of Nagaland has come a long way.
One significant milestone is the spread of the banking system to people’s doorstep, thanks to the creative solutions from government’s own young heroes, like Mon District Magistrate Thavaseelan K (34).
He is a product of the College of Engineering, Guindy, and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
His ingenious intervention has brought about financial inclusion to one of the most backward districts of the country.
His approach to ensuring financial inclusion, employment and basic steps towards fighting the Covid-19 pandemic earned him the SKOCH Award recently.
The award recognises people, projects and institutions that go the extra mile to make India a better place to live in.
After joining as the DM in November 2017, the first thing that Thavaseelan attempted was on the financial front. Mon is a remote district and shares border with Myanmar, forcing locals to travel miles to access banks.
The DM took several steps to enable 10,294 people to open India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) savings accounts till July 1 this year.
“People would travel more than 50 km to access a bank. We found a solution through IPPB: you can operate a full-fledged account from a post office. Mon has recorded second-best performance in opening new IPPB accounts in terms of the target set in the country,” Thavaseelan told this paper.
“Most banks are in a consolidation mode — nobody wants to open a bank branch at an unprofitable place,” he said.
Mon has a population of 2.5 lakh. Three of the eight bank branches here are in district headquarters Mon.
“For most schemes, the Central government directly transfers money to the bank accounts of beneficiaries. The benefits cannot be availed unless you have a bank account. So, we chose the IPPB route,” Thavaseelan said.
The IPPB savings bank accounts are different from normal postal savings accounts. This is like a full-fledged bank account which one can operate through post offices in villages.
“In IPPB, the best thing is AADHAR-Enabled Payment System. By using it, you can access your account, no matter what or where your bank branch is. You can also access your account in any other bank,” said Thavaseelan, a 2012-batch IAS officer.
Under the Skill Mon Mission, Thavaseelan said the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana had been massively used for skill development.
“The Nagaland government has MoUs with several registered training partners who enroll students, train them and give them placements in sectors such as tourism, hospitality, aviation, telecom and others. This entails zero cost to the youth – I would say it is one of the most effective schemes,” Thavaseelan said.
The Mon Skill Mission was launched early last year. The trainers come to Mon to take part in seminars and workshops for the unemployed looking for a job.
Of the 563 people trained, 455 have already been placed within and outside the country.
Fifty-six were undergoing training when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, while 52 others returned after training as they were unwilling to work away from home.
Fighting Covid-19
When people started returning home in the wake of the outbreak of Covid-19, Thavaseelan sought to fight the menace using technology and data.
“We went in for geo-fencing — you can keep people within a space and if they move out, you automatically get an alert. We tied up with a startup called Intugine Technologies based in Bengaluru which is helping us to monitor people under quarantine,” the DM said.
The district also tied up with a firm, Infinite Analytics, headquartered in Boston.
It specialises in rapid contact tracing. The moment someone is identified as Covid-19 positive, it can identify people who came in his contact by using technologies of artificial intelligence, deep learning and data analytics.
“We tied up also with yet another company based in New Jersey. It monitors the movement of people under quarantine. People can also update their daily health status. If someone has severe symptoms, we get an auto alert.
Then, Clappia is a system that we are using to manage quarantine centres. Every day, a link is sent to the inmates where they have to upload their selfie and latitude and longitude. It helps us to monitor their locations on a daily basis. They can also give us feedback,” the DM said.
“We are delighted that our efforts have been recognised at the national level. It motivates us to do more,” he said, adding, several interventions are ongoing in sectors such as health, Education, water and sanitation in addition to road and telecom connectivity. We hope to complete these over the next year.”