An Evaluation of Financial Inclusion in India:Some Policy Insights

In the era of digital financial inclusion, one of the main challenges faced by the policymakers is to provide affordable, instantaneous and user-friendly access to financial products and services to the common man. Though there has been an impressive growth in terms of bank branches, Business Correspondents and Kisan Credit Cards amongst others during the last five decades, cent per cent financial inclusion in India appears to be a difficult target to achieve. By following the international best practices, Indian banks may be rated at regular intervals on their efforts to facilitate financial inclusion. The policymakers may seriously think of including moneylenders as part of microfinance institutions, or small finance banks or any other institutional mechanism, as they are now an indispensable part of rural India due to the farmers’ proximity to them and their lack of awareness of various initiatives taken by the government. There should be a thrust on demand-side rather than the supply-side alone to make financial inclusion a real success.