Ford Foundation
Palghar was carved out of Thane district and was recently minted (August 2014) as a tribal district in state of Maharashtra that is located about 120-140 KMs north of Mumbai city along the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway. Skirted by Gujrat on the north and northwest and Nasik and Thane on North East and Northwest, Palghar is home to landowners belonging to Agri and Kunabi ethnicity (OBC) and tribal (Adivasi)
* who form majority of population are the agricultural labour toiling in these lands.
Since its division as a separate district one of major problems faced by the villagers has been related to the fact that majority of their identity cards ( Aadhar card, Birth Certificates etc) show the district address as Thane. This had deprived of each and every facility since none of their identity proofs were accepted. To get this altered they had to make several trips to Taluka place, thus having to give up their daily wages for few days and in addition had to spend addition funds in travel food etc. This was increasingly becoming difficult for them.
PUKAR decided to change this by bringing E-Services to their door steps by the E-Sevaks who would help them to make all the corrections or apply for the new cards, thus improving their daily lives. Five villages were chosen for this endeavour.
E-Sevaks collected data on Aadhar card from 4569 individuals of the 5 villages. It revealed multiple mistakes in the data. Door to Door Education and data collection related to importance of bank accounts, transactions and debit card completed.
Due to education imparted by E-Sevaks related to Aadhar cards, villagers demanded correction in their cards. Therefore PUKAR, in collaboration with government certified local Aadhar Card agency, organised camps where these corrections were completed. It needs to be noted that PUKAR conducted these camps for the fees announced by the government and by the process dictated by UIDAI.
| No. |
Village |
Household |
Population |
| 1 |
Lalthane |
187 |
635 |
| 2 |
Gowade |
207 |
957 |
| 3 |
Kude |
224 |
998 |
| 4 |
Girale |
222 |
937 |
| 5 |
Kokner |
266 |
932 |
For those people without bank accounts opening of the same is being carried out
in each village by collaboration with local bank branch called Vakrangi Kendra.
