The Old School Lunch

Bank pushes Mumbai’s prostitutes to save

By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 26, 6:14 PM ET
MUMBAI, India - In the heart of Mumbai’s red light district, several prostitutes sit on brown plastic chairs in a narrow room waiting to do something many have never been able to do before: deposit their savings in a bank.

The small bank is the initiative of the women and aims to help them break the vicious cycle of poverty and exploitation that keeps them indebted to brothel owners.
Bank pushes Mumbai’s prostitutes to save
The simple act of squirreling away some money was previously out of reach for many customers of the Sangini Women’s Cooperative Bank. Prostitutes are often shunned by regular banks or lack residence documents or birth certificates officially required to open an account in India.

Now, for the last three months, they have been able to enter the bank daily to deposit an average of 10 to 20 rupees (25 to 50 cents) and dream of things they will do as their savings grow.

“We may not have house papers, but we also dream,” said Indra Jai, 40, who was lured from a southern village 20 years ago with promises of a job in Mumbai and then forced into prostitution. “We should get respect; our money is also good.”

Jai said she dreams of buying a small house and a tailor shop in her village and paying for her 19-year-old son’s college education.

The government estimates there are 3 million prostitutes in India, many of whom start as children lured by traffickers. Others are teenagers sold by impoverished family members to brothel owners.

They spend up to five years working for free in dingy, airless rooms to repay the brothel owner’s investment. To survive they often turn to moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates and drive themselves further into debt and dependance.

Thoughts of breaking the cycle drive the bank’s more than 900 customers.

“If we fall ill who will look after us? We must save when we are still earning,” said Jai, a founding member of the bank.

The bank — three narrow rooms that also house a cooperative store — is filled with women, some queuing up in front of a teller, others shopping for soap, food, grains and condoms.

Mumbai’s prostitutes began a women’s cooperative group two years ago with support from PSI, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. The bank and store were launched with $40,000 in funding from PSI.

“We thought it would take a year to get 100 customers, but we opened more than 100 accounts on day one,” said Shilpa Merchant, PSI’s Mumbai director.

Guided by PSI, the bank invests daily deposits totaling 25,000 rupees ($625) in fixed savings schemes with state-run banks earning 9.5 percent interest per year.

The women say entering the bank every day helps them hold onto their dreams.

“Sometimes I think my life is a waste,” said Gulabja Sheikh, 35, who was sold at 15 by her parents. “But now I have my house to work for.”

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I wanted to emphasize in particular the part where the article says that in India, banks shun prostitutes from opening bank accounts on top of denying them because of lack of “proper identification” and such. This sounds like another “it happens over there but never in the U.S.” sort of thing but this happens all the time here. As some of you may know, my old job was working at what was basically a bank/mail/information/referral center for homeless and low-income men and women. These are people who, when they get whatever sort of money they get whether that’s federal assistance, job paychecks, handouts or whatnot, they aren’t able to open up an account at the local Bank of America. Some of these people have a driver’s license. Many do not. Most have a basic plastic ID card printed from one of the local shelters. When you are in this position and you have a check you have to cash, your alternative, if you don’t have a non-profit bank like the one I worked at, is to go to the local check-cashing Money Tree or Money Mart and have them take anywhere from a 10-20% fee from your check. If you’re struggling from paycheck to paycheck (to put it mildly) and they’re taking 20 dollars of your 100, you’re going to feel that. Now, we took a fee from checks as well (2%) but that was pretty minimal compared to, again, upwards of 20%. The point is simple. If you are poor in America, if you’re of extremely low-income or chronically homeless and don’t have a State license form of identification, your birth certificate or banks wont open an account because you have a bad record for writing bad checks, you won’t be able to open an account plain and simple. You will be forced to go to Money Mart or go the Nancy Botwin route and just make everything a cash transaction (which means obviously carrying and finding places to store cash, sounds real safe if you’re living on the streets, right?) unless, again, you’re able to find some organization that does it for an extremely small fee. It costs money to be poor in America.