You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Delhi’ tag.
> Posted by Joshua Goldstein, Principal Director for Economic Citizenship & Disability Inclusion, CFI
#167785839 / gettyimages.com
Last June, in my hotel room in Delhi, I read in the Sunday edition of the Times of India that hiring white girls to work wedding parties is the new status symbol in Bangalore. Though this might sound surprising, alabaster skin as the ideal of beauty (and the status that goes with it) is neither new to nor specific to India. This is not a trivial matter but a deadly serious business.
One need only look at skin whitening products, like Unilever’s “Fair and Lovely”, which are great sellers in the beauty product category in India, Bangladesh, and Thailand—indeed, in 30 countries around the world. The Unilever Sri Lanka website reads: “Today, 250 million consumers across the globe strongly connect with Fair and Lovely as a brand that stands for the belief that beauty empowers a woman to change her destiny.”
Last month the Delhi government launched Saral Money, a payment product that helps to fill in the financial inclusion gap for individuals who don’t have the required identification verification documents to open a bank account. With Saral Money, one can open a basic account with one of India’s most prominent banks using just an Aadhar number. Aadhar numbers, issued by the government on a volunteer opt-in basis, are unique 12-digit identification numbers linked to an individual’s demographic and biometric information. Governance Now has more on the story through their post Next Aadhaar in Financial Inclusion: Saral prepaid card, which is copied in part below.
Delhi government on Wednesday launched the ‘Saral Money Prepaid card’ to provide banking services to those people who are unable to open a bank account due to lack of supporting documents for their ‘know your customer’ (KYC) verification. Saral has been launched by five of India’s prominent banks namely Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and State Bank of India in collaboration with the payment gateway provider, Visa and Aadhar.
To open a bank account with the above five banks and to get a Saral Money Prepaid card, a person will now just have to produce the Aadhar card to fulfill the KYC norms. The limit of such accounts will be Rs 50,000 and the customer will be able to do cashless transactions with the help of the Saral card at the many authorised places in the city.
Facebook
Twitter
Recent Comments