Thread:
I am an Indian public sector Bank employee. Last week a person came to our branch office Ranikhet (Uttrakhand), he told us that he was a Sarpanch (head of village) and that his village is in remote hilly area, there is no Bank & villagers are not having Bank accounts. 1/n

he told the village is inaccessible by road so villagers can't come to Branch in the town. It was a tedious task given the Covid crisis and transport, So our branch team (My BH, me and our HKP) decided that we should go ourselves to open the Bank account in the village. 2/n

The villagers have no access to Xerox machine so we have arranged a Xerox machine & carried it ourselves.
It was around 10 km from our branch we went by car maintaining social distancing with each other. Then from road it was a path of 1 km on foot. We walked carrying machine 3/n

We had estimated 30-40 people but we arranged extra account opening forms. To our surprise, there were around 60-70 villagers who were not having Bank accounts most were females.
Nevertheless, we tried to fill maximum AOF and got somewhere near 70 when our AOF got over 4/n

We went on SUNDAY. Arranged our own vehicle, Xerox machine, carrying it on foot. Maintained social distancing and hygiene for each other and opened 70 villagers' accounts. Not for profit, but for social service and the theme of India. Tell me, which private Bank will do that? 5/n

All n all it was a mesmerizing experience of remote hill village. But 1 thing I learnt from this experience that the concept suggested by @NITIAayog abt privatization of PSBs is not viable in true essence of India. There was no Bank in vicinity at all but we've managed to go. n/n