Financial Inclusion in India

Abstract

Inclusive development had been one of the prime agendas of government ever since it was first mentioned in the eleventh five-year plan. Amongst its many segments, one of the core is financial inclusion. Hence discussion and research on this issue become inevitable in contemporary domain where major concern of all the diverse sections of Indian society remains expediting inclusive development as prime targets. Emanating from here our attention gets directed towards the current scenario of financial inclusion in India, wherein huge section of population is being deprived of accessibility to financial services or financial inclusion which makes it an important developmental concern. Financial Inclusion in India dates back to pre- independence times but were quite rare due to less interest of British Government in this and was majorly carried by big banks run by Indians. Post-Independence the process of provisioning financial services to the larger sects of masses was enthusiastically taken forward by RBI and later on supported by government policies aimed at financial inclusion. Ever since then India remained one of the front runners in expanding and disbursing financial services to the poor. Not only formal banking sector expanded but other institutions like Micro finance Institutions, Cooperatives, non-banking financial institutions etc. were set up to provision financial services and products to the masses. Even successive governments in India have kept this issue of financial inclusion as one of the primary targets in their manifestos and later on as part of government policies or agendas to reach larger goal of inclusive development. To achieve this large-scale target of financial inclusion, various schemes and programmes were initiated in past as well as at present so as to bring financial services closer to the masses as well as enthuse the citizens to further access and integrate themselves with formal financial system. Thus, the following research study is based upon secondary data analysis from RBI and prior research on the topic. The study captures the issue from multiple dimensions including its current scenario initiatives taken in this direction and from there reflecting upon the need of future endeavours. In a nutshell the research will try to analyse financial inclusion as one of the crucial mechanism of realising larger aim of inclusive development from all dimensions and hence reach out at more informed analysis.