First Rickshaw Bank
Dr Pradip Sarmah, a vet in Guwahati started his rickshaw bank project in November 2004 after he discovered that most of the rickshaw pullers did not own the rickshaws they plied. The proposal that he had sent to the Citizen Base Investment Competition held by Asoka Innovators for the Public won and big corporates like ONGC, HLL, IOC lent support.
The Rickshaw Bank is not a bank in the real sense of the word. It collects money and provides finance to rickshaw pullers so that they can own their own rickshaws. The bank is a part of Centre for Rural Development (CRD) an NGO started by Sarmah. He got licences and identity cards and blue uniforms. Sarmah approached insurance companies since he found that not a single rickshaw was insured. Oriental Insurance was chosen and now each rickshaw is insured at Rs 7000, the puller for Rs 50,000 and two passengers for Rs 25,000 each. Then, he offered the back of the rickshaws as advertising space at Rs 7000 per rickshaw.
When he wrote to IIT Delhi asking if they had any energy-efficient rickshaw models, they offered to design new models. But he finally went with the lIT Guwahati model which was best suited for the rains of the North East. Lighter too.
Links here.
1.http://www.crdev.org/rb.asp
2.http://www.globalgiving.com/pr/700/proj684p.html
3.http://www.changemakers.net/journal/300508/displayfec.cfm?ID=111
Saturday, May 5, 2007
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