A recent survey on 147 developing country showed that 1.7 billion people do not have a bank account. I do not know whether the Banjara community of Umarni village, Nichla Fali, was included in that survey, since a large community of tribals in and around Sirohi district would not have been able to save even a little without the help of micro credit opportunities provided by voluntary organisations of that area.

I was at Adivasi Bachat Evam Swayang Seva Samiti Ltd, the Cooperative Society under Janchetna Sansthan in Abu Road, Rajasthan. Their financial products linked with cultivation practice and season has brought some relief to the Banjara, Bhil and other tribal community in that area.

ABESSSL and Janchetna are soon introducing a livelihood project that will link products made of forest produce in the tribal community. This effort aims to include 10,000 cooperative members in the project.

Janchetna is using OurBank for their micro credit operation, making the member database useful for future projects with the community. When I asked Karuna the Accountant in ABESSSL, how she felt about working things through an MIS instead of manual calculation using typical Accounting softwares, her reply with a big grin was "mahina ke ant me hajaro ka interest calculation se to bache" (At the month end I will be relieved of calculating the month end interest of thousands of loan accounts.) I felt a sense of satisfaction. Technology should reduce burden and not put a burden of using a new system.