Chetna has been honored with the 2005 Jankidevi Bajaj Puraskar award for rural entrepreneurship, a national award that honors a woman who has made an outstanding contribution to uplift the welfare of women and children, particularly in rural areas.  She has also been awarded lifetime membership with Ashoka Innovators for the Public and was selected for the first class of Yale University’s World Fellows program in 2002-3.  In addition, she has participated in Harvard University’s 2003 Bridge Builders’ Conference.  The Mann Deshi Mahila Bank, founded by Chetna, has also recently won first prize in social sector of the international 2005 Ashoka Changemakers Innovation award, which promotes market-based strategies that benefit low-income communities.

During her talk with the Fellows she described how she came to be involved in the development sector, particularly her launch of Mann Deshi.  After completing her higher education she wanted to work in the village with the village people. Initially people did not accept her, believing they did not need her help. This made her think in a different way. When later she married a farmer and faced hard times, she decided that a problem existed somewhere in the economics system. This led her to conduct research on the topic and to apply to RBI for a women’s bank.

Yet when she applied for registration of a women’s bank in RBI, Chetna faced a problem: RBI rejected her application because of illiteracy among the members. Thus, she decided to teach the women how to write their names and produce a signature and succeeded in teaching them within three months. At this time she reapplied to the RBI and was finally granted approval.  Mann Deshi now provides loans to both the individual and group loans to the women.

Chetna believes that emotions, fear of competitors and fear of failure are the barriers for success. She also suggested that good social entrepreneurs should listen closely to people because of the value in others’ thoughts and suggestions.