PATNA, India, April 3 India's poor, some still using their thumb prints to sign, now enjoy high-tech banking service thanks to new biometric cash machines.Mahendra Sahni, a daily wage worker in the eastern state of Bihar, spends only a few minutes before a biometric machine that dispenses cash for him after reading his thumb print. For years in the past, the illiterate fish farmer had been spending nearly a day getting to a bank and standing in long lines to cash his wages, reports the BBC.All he does now is insert a cash card into the biometric machine, which then greets him in Hindustani, "Please put your thumb on the specified space." When he does that, crisp currency bills roll out with the machine saying, "Your cash is ready. Please accept it." "This shows how science has made progress and can be used for poor village people like us," Sahni told the BBC. The biometric cash machines are designed for those who cannot read or write. The machine program is soon expected to bring some 60 million households under its fold.Copyright 2007 by UPI
