Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

India is home to one third of the world's poor with second highest number of financially excluded households estimatedat about 135 million. A majority of the urban poor are internal migrants employed in unstable occupations (rickshaw pulling,street vendors) in the unorganised sector. Migrants face hardships in remitting their earnings because they do not have a bankaccount both at the migrated place and their village, thusforcing them towards expensive informal sector. Financialinclusion drive calls for a conscious attempt to reach the vast numbers of excluded poor. As migrant workers areheterogeneous, little, if any direct information is available about the volume of remittances and the transfer mechanismsused by migrants. Given the migrant workers contribution to the urban economy, issues relating to migrant remittancesassume significance for achieving financial inclusion.

The paper is drawn from a wider study about 176 rickshaw pullers in Delhi and explores the remittance behaviour basedon primary data collected during August-October 2009. The results are instructive about the remittance behaviour of migrantpullers throwing useful insights about the potential market demand that exists for capturing this market by designingsuitable products and thus moving towards financial inclusion of these migrant workers.