IBFEATURES

Burunda Pangi places her laptop on the top of a cemented, dried-up water tank. As the internet connectivity is poor, she keeps her mobile phone on the elevated tin roof of a three-room hutment in Khajuriguda, a remote tribal village in the Naxalite-battered Malkangiri district of Odisha. 

Surrounding Pangi are a group of old men and women who have come to collect their monthly old age pension of Rs 500 provided by the Odisha state government. They haven’t gone to the fields to work and are waiting for the money that means so much to them.

“We know the date and the time she will come. On the 15th of every month, we wait for her,” says Panduram Sirsa, a 75-year-old farmer.

While an old woman shouts that she has not been getting her pension for the last two months, Pangi has just finished verifying the details of Sirsa and hands out Rs 500 to him. He takes the money, wishes her well and, holding his grandson’s hand, gets ready to make the 5-km return trek to his village. “No school for him. He is a drop-out,” he tells us, before walking away.

The afternoon sun in the wintry month of December is mild but it is not yet cold in this part of Malkangiri. Pangi’s day had started much earlier, in another village, Jodamba, where the State Bank of India’s customer service point (CSP) is housed. Located 70 km away from the nearest branch at Chitrakonda in Malkangiri district of Odisha, the CSP caters to the villages of four panchayats.   

There is a flurry of activity outside this remotely-located CSP office. Around 20 villagers have lined up to collect their monthly pensions and other government doles. They have been asked to come before noon as Pangi would have to set out to other neighbouring villages to distribute the monthly pensions to the elderly.

While talking to the people, Pangi takes hold of Sanda Golari’s index finger and places it on the small orange machine to attest her fingerprint. After the verification process is over, she hands out Rs 500 to the ever-smiling Golari. Holding the note tightly in her hand, Golaria says “it's money for the month”, and moves sideways to give way to others in the queue.

The network support that SBI provides through Pangi is the only link between the government and the villagers in these far-flung places up in the hills to access basic banking services where amenities like electricity and water are luxuries.

Before SBI zeroed in on this CSP in June 2022, villagers had to travel all the way to Chitrakonda to get their monthly pensions and other banking services done. There was also no bridge for villagers to make the road journey. They used to cross the Sileru river by boat, halt at night in Chitrakonda and come back the next day. The Gurupriya bridge only got opened in 2018 and road construction to the villages started a year later. 

Pangi makes the journey to these villages around Jodamba, riding on her husband’s motorcycle. She hands out old age pensions to the villagers who find it difficult to come to the CSP centre. “Sometimes we carry a lunch packet and go walking to save the diesel cost,” she says.

Once a hotbed for Naxalite activity, this has weakened after the Border Security Force (BSF) set up their base camp at Hantalguda near Jodamba. As you commute through the villages, even now armed BSF staff keep guard at some roadside places overlooking the jungles.

When word spread in Jodamba that SBI was coming to their village and needed someone literate to handle the centre, Pangi held on to this lifeline that would give her a source of livelihood.

She had just gone through a difficult phase when the Covid-19 pandemic spread havoc across India in 2020. Though none contracted the disease in the area where she lived, movements were restricted. During this period, she lost her father and her brother. “Even in normal times, options for obtaining a job were few. Now it seemed as if nothing would work for me,” she tells us, quickly drawing her gaze back to the laptop. 

Though a graduate in political science, she had no money to set up the infrastructure which would entitle her to become a part of SBI’s machinery. Her husband, Lachmu Behera, came up with this idea of mortgaging his mother’s ornaments to fund the basic office needs.

Among the four ornaments put on display at a local trader’s table on a hot summer afternoon in Paruguda village, the one that stood out was the gold necklace strung with a small, circular pendant of Goddess Lakshmi.

It was Pangi’s mother-in-law’s only gold necklace. She was nostalgic about it as it meant letting the goddess of wealth go. Along with that to be mortgaged were two bangles with tiny motifs on it and a gold ring with a red stone.

“My mother-in-law was initially sad that she had to give up her ornaments. But as the purpose was to secure the future of her son’s family, she was keen that the mortgage be conducted soon,” says Pangi, recollecting those troubled days.

The ornaments went for Rs 80,000, just enough for Pangi to set up the basic office infrastructure to run the CSP. She needed the money to buy a computer, a printer, a table and an UPS for power backup while SBI would provide her network support. She would be paid based on the transactions she conducted on behalf of the country’s largest bank.

The husband-wife duo initially bought two HP laptops and a printer. But the CSP in Jodamba village could not work without an UPS since power supply was available for just four hours in a day – two hours in the morning and the same number of hours in the evening.

“Besides selling the ornaments, we also took a small loan of Rs 16,000 from Bajaj Finance. It didn’t strike us at that time that we could have got a loan from SBI,” said Behera, who also helps Pangi run the CSP. 

The CSP is getting crowded at the counter and Pangi is unable to talk. She has to get the beneficiaries to give a thumb impression on the big grey register that she has kept beside her laptop and authenticate the fingerprint. "There should not be any confusion later in our record book,” she says, showing the wad of notes she has put in a white cellophane box.

“I need to buy a small, steel cash box,” she adds, while continuing to serve the customers.

Life was so different before the SBI’s CSP or Pangi came to this village. Travel to the nearest bank branch at Chitrakonda was a two-day ordeal, recollects Mallika Golari, a widow who has made made many such journeys around the 15th of every month. 

“Before the bridge was set up, travel by boat was the only way we could reach the SBI’s branch at Chitrakonda. Since the last boat to return to our village was at 2.30 pm, all of us could not finish our work in the branch. We would often make an overnight halt under the peepal tree outside the branch,” she said.

The plight of hundreds of tribals like Sanda drove the SBI to open a CSP at Jodambo, linking up villagers residing in 60 villages spread across four panchayats.

“We have food to eat, but hardly have any money. We still do some barter, exchanging produces like banana and rice with oil or other items,” says Sunanda Golari, who has come to the CSP wearing a red saree. 

She became eligible for pension after her husband died suddenly in the paddy field many years ago during a harvest festival. She tries to recollect the year but time stands still in these hills, and she gives up. “It's many years, so many years back that I have now stopped dreaming about him,” she says, adjusting her metal earrings that hang down below her ears.

As night falls in Jodambo, the CSP outlet turns into Pangi’s house. She sleeps on the floor of the first room, along with her husband. The couple do not use the adjoining room as it doesn’t have a door. The third room has no roofing.

Pangi, aged 25, pays Rs 1,000 as rent for the three-room house. Then there is fuel cost for the motorcycle. Her income for the month of December was Rs 7,800 from the bank, falling from a high of 10,200 in November. On an average, she gets around Rs 8,000 a month but has to also keep cash aside to run the operations. “We have to dispense the pension amount. The money will come back to us later,” she explains. 

Sometimes, it is tough managing the finances. Life is also difficult in the hills. But she forgets everything when she sees smiles appear on the faces of old men and women who come to her. 

“I am serving the people while earning some money.  The job gives me hope that lives of the people here would improve,” she says, as she prepares to go to sleep.