SBI's new CSR initiative to improve health, education, infra in 50 villages

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The nation's largest lender State Bank of India on Monday launched a CSR initiative, SBI Gram Seva, which will work in the areas of health, education, environment and rural infrastructure.

The SBI Foundation will identify and partner with NGOs to carry out CSR initiatives under which it adopt five villages each from 10 village panchayats with each village getting around Rs 2.40 crore over the next three years.

"The reason why we undertook this initiative is threefold. One is to ensure it is holistic, sustainable and we want to ensure that we do it in collaboration," chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya told reporters.

Initially, 10-gram panchayats comprising of 50 villages in six states have been adopted, she said, added the banks plan to adopt 100-gram panchayats in the next three years.