From Our Correspondent
GUWAHATI: If chit fund companies have spread their money making business to the nook and corner of Assam thereby making gullible people to go for risky investment with them, it is mainly because of lack of adequate number of branches nationalized banks and Post Office branches to provide options for savings to the poor rural people.
As on date 12 chit funds are operating in Assam with their agents collecting money from cross sections of depositors in remote villages where there is no presence of bank branches and post offices in the vicinity.
These chit funds target labourers, rickshaw pullers, MNREGA workers, farmers in those remote areas taking advantage of lack of bank branches.
According to official figures only 30 per cent of the total population in Assam has bank accounts reflecting the poor state of banking network in the State.
There are 259 State Bank of India branches in Assam besides 707 branches of other nationalized banks, 399 regional rural bank branches, 68 branches of other banks.
That adds upto total 1,434 bank branches that are operating in the State with a population of 3,11,69,272. The banks are found not very zealous in advertising their various deposit schemes to attract common people.
Moreover, banks are not found very receptive to illiterate people willing to open bank accounts in rural areas where presence of post offices with small saving schemes is also very skeletal.
Assam has total 4007 post-offices including 3721 in rural areas and 286 in urban areas.
That means there are only one post office per two lakh people in Assam and to make the situation worse there is hardly any attempt by the authorities concerned to publicise numerous small savings schemes available in post offices.
The situation has just worked for the advantage of chit funds with doubtful credentials to expand their tentacles among the gullible investors in the State.
Unlike the banks, these chit fund companies allow daily investment as low as Rs 10 that acts as a boon for them.
But the gullible people who have not much alternative find themselves trapped by the agents of these chit funds.