'Chaiwala' of Narayangarh Seeks Bank for His Village in a Letter to PM Modi, SBI Assures One

Like most of Narayangarh, Dipak Kumar Das, ‘chaiwala’ grew up without any access to banking services in his gram panchayat. He decided to bring change to the village and after several failed attempts finally wrote to prime minister Narendra Modi in February 2021 and sought a bank in his village. For the past 75 years, residents of Narayangarh walk down kilometers to access the facility.

Das is a resident of Kumarpur village and his fight for the facility began last year. Apart from selling tea, he helps villagers in filling forms and completing formalities for easy access to government schemes. Initially, he wrote a letter to the State Bank of India (SBI), Lead Manager but to his surprise, there was no response from them. Then on behalf of the Kushda club, in February last year, he wrote a letter to the PM, along with signatures of the entire village, seeking a bank in their gram panchayat. The prime minister’s office took cognizance of his letter and asked SBI to act on the matter.

A bank in the village would give the Adivasis access to all government-run schemes for which money is directly transferred to the account of the beneficiary.

Months later, SBI general manager mailed Das stating that they cannot erect a bank but promised a customer centre. “There are several schemes of government which people are not even aware of, while I was helping them I realised that the lack of a bank was a huge problem. So I wrote to LDM nothing happened, then I wrote to the Prime Minister and got a letter from SBI. They wrote that they cannot open a branch but will open a customer service point in our village. I am not happy with the response, hence, I have written to the Finance Ministry, and hope things will work out,” Das told News 18.

As an outcome of Das’s request, SBI will first provide a customer service point and later a bank. Residents of the village have been celebrating the development and have attributed the achievement to Das. “We had to travel 20 km to get our pension, we thank Dipak for this development,” said, 70-year-old, Goa Bhokta.

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