Year: 2021 | Month: June | Volume 10 | Issue 2
Effect of Public Distribution System Workers in Influencing the Women Street Vendors to Use Banks - Enabling Financial Inclusion
Praveen Paul Jeyapaul
Silambarasan Manimaran
DOI:10.46852/2249-6637.02.2021.1
Abstract:
Women street vendors especially face tremendous challenges in terms of their financial security. Using banks for their financial transaction will give them respite from private money lenders, thereby leading to these ’’women’s’ financial inclusion in the society. To convince these women street vendors to increase their usage of banks, it is proposed to garner the help of workers from the public distribution system (PDS). It is hypothesized that these PDS workers will act as influencers in convincing the women street vendors (SVs)to use the banks in a better manner. Two sets of questionnaires were developed. Initially, one was administered to get their bank usage pattern and PDS workers were then requested to educate the Women SVs on the benefits of banks. After six months, the second questionnaire was administered to find any significant change in behavior with the same set of women street vendors. The effect of age and education level of the women SVs in accepting the advice of PDS workers to use banks is investigated using a Multivariate generalized linear model (MGLM). The results of the MGLM suggest that education level of the SVs has an evident and contingent influence on their acceptance of PDS worker’s advice, while age makes no significant difference. To compare whether the mean of the dependent variable (knowledge about bank) is the same or changed (change in knowledge about bank) before and after the PDS workers have educated the women SVs, paired-samples T test is used. Based on the results, it is concluded that the PDS workers make a difference in educating the Women SVs on the benefits and purpose of using banks. In order to find out exactly where the difference occurs between the groups a post hoc test is carried out. The outcome of the post-hoc test suggests that the impact of PDS workers is higher with the Women SVs whose education levels are lower. However, there is no improvement on the opinion in the women SVs whose education level is higher. It is suggested that policymakers use PDS workers to target women SVs with lower education levels to educate them on the benefits of using banks for financial transactions instead of relying on private money lenders.
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