Study on the Effect of Public Distribution System Workers in Influencing the Women Street Vendors to Use Banks - Enabling Financial Inclusion

Abstract

There are tremendous challenges faced by women street vendors (WSVs) for financial security. Using banks for their financial transaction will give them respite from private money lenders thereby leading to their financial inclusion in the society.  The objective of the study is to convince these WSVs to increase their usage of banks by garnering the help of workers from the public distribution system (PDS). It is hypothesised that these PDS workers will act as influencers in convincing the WSVs to use the banks in a better manner. Two sets of questionnaires were developed; one was administered to get their bank usage pattern. Then, PDS workers were requested to educate WSVs on benefits of banks. After six months the second questionnaire was administered to find any significant change in behaviour with the same set of WSVs. The effect of age and education level of the WSVs in accepting the advice of PDS workers to use banks is investigated using Multivariate generalized linear model (MGLM). The results suggest that education level of the SVs has a clear and contingent influence on their acceptance of PDS workers advices, while age makes no significant difference. Based on the analysis, it is concluded that PDS workers do make a difference in educating the WSVs on the benefits of using banks. It was also found that the impact of PDS workers is higher with the WSVs whose education levels are lower. It is suggested that policy makers can use PDS workers to target WSVs with lower education level for educating them on the benefits of using banks for financial transactions instead of relying on private money lenders.