Corporate Citizen Claps for luCknow Couple ashita and anish nath and their journey towards empowering girls of pasChim gaon in unnao distriCt,uttar pradesh

The Good Harvest School is India’s first all-girls agricultural school. It is a fallout of Anish’s deep research into farming and the couple’s intent to try and enhance the plight of girls and future women farmers as part of the village economy. They have made it their life’s mission to educate girls enrolled in their school and also impart life skills. The open school system is spread over 50,000 sq. ft. equipped with a nursery, seed bank and cattle. After much convincing of the girl’s parents, and with the support of the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), the Naths have faith in handing over the baton of economic progression to young girls too. The working couple relocated from Delhi when Anish quit his corporate job and purchased a plot of land in 2013, in the highly agri dependent zone in Unnao district. Soon they started tackling farming-related issues. They were also appalled at the miserable state of the education system and decided to teach girls farming in an intensive manner that would not only equip them for life but also provide valuable information to their parents on agriculture. “Overall, we wanted these girls to study in an environment where they felt safe, looked up to one another and enjoyed their childhood. About two and half years later since 2016, close to 45 girls between the ages of two and a half to 13 years now consider the school as their second home”, said Ashita. The school runs five days a week, and the girls have been able to grow local vegetables and seasonal ones like Broccoli, Kohlrabi and even purple cabbage. Their dream is to integrate the school within the framework of the primary school system up to class 5th with subject teachers as against volunteers who teach at the school currently. Hats off to the Naths for sowing the seed of passion not only for themselves but also the ‘Bhoomi Putris’ in building a ‘women-oriented’ community for the future!

Corporate Citizen slaps the tendenCy of bank frauds that has been lashing the banking seCtor lately

The victimisation of depositors to gain control over their own hard-earned money and also endangering them mentally to play with their lives, is undoubtedly a serious offence. The RBI has identified some Rs.263,944 crore worth of frauds in the first half of 2019 itself, with some scams dating back to 2000-2001 that have remained well hidden from the Ombudsman. The year 2019 witnessed an exceptional increase in the occurrence of frauds worth Rs.1,000 crore each, rising sharply to eat away some Rs.44,951 crore from the banks. This amount is twice that of all that combined in the past five years and about 97 % of these occurred in the earlier years as per the RBI’s Financial Stability Report. This year, of the 21 cases of fraud, in the Rs.1,000 crore category, about 14 have been identified. However, RBI stated that banks reported 4,412 cases of frauds worth Rs.1.13 lakh crore in the first half of the current fiscal in comparison to the 6,801 cases of frauds worth Rs.71,543 crore reported in the entire 2018-19. Taking cognisance of the heightened probability of occurrence of such scams, the apex bank is now looking into the scope and role of forensic audits for quicker detection of frauds in the banking system. “Banks are required to set up specialised units to make use of market intelligence and data analytics and also put in place transaction monitoring system. In order to bring clarity, the role and scope of forensic audit along with timelines is also being examined,” said RBI. In addition, reporting of fraud by non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) and Urban Cooperative Banks will also become integral to RBI’s registry database. With at least 22 ATM swindling cases registered in Kolkata alone in early December is a clear trigger for the entire banking sector to spruce up its act–either cleanse itself through a tie-up with corporates via good governance and lending patterns or enhance its response alert systems in tandem with cyber security cells. With consumers coming on to the streets as they did in the recent frauds associated with the Punjab Maharashtra Co-operative bank or that of the Punjab National Bank (Nirav Modi case); banking on the banker’s faith is definitely running out!