Swabhimaan-Financial Inclusion

10:29 PM Thinker

                       Swabhimaan-Financial Inclusion

Providing banking facilities across length and breadth of the country, particularly in rural areas, has always been a great challenge for the successive governments since Independence. Nationalisation gave a big boost to expansion of banks in rural areas with Public Sector Banks becoming important instruments for advancement of rural banking and changing lives of rural populace. However, financial inclusion remains one of the biggest challenges before our nation even today as only about 38% of bank branches are in rural areas and only 40% (approx.) of the country’s population have bank accounts. 

Though strides have been made in expansion of bank branches from around 8700 at the time of bank nationalization in 1969 to around 87,000 presently, only 32,000 (approx.) are in rural areas. The average population per bank branch is around 13,900. To address this need the Union Finance Minister in his Budget Speech 2010-11 directed all banks, to provide appropriate banking facilities to habitations having population in excess of 2,000 by March, 2012 using various models and technologies including branchless banking through Business Correspondents. Accordingly, the banks through the forum of State Level Banker Committees (SLBCs), have formulated their roadmaps for Financial Inclusion and have identified approximately 73,000 habitations having a population of over 2,000 for providing banking facilities. These habitations have been allocated to Commercial Banks, Regional Rural Banks and Cooperative Banks for providing banking facilities in a time bound manner. This would provide new bank accounts to around 5 crore rural households.

Accordingly, a nationwide programme on financial inclusion, “Swabhimaan” was launched in February, 2011 by the Government, which is focused on bringing the deprived sections of the society in banking network to ensure that the benefits of economic growth reach everyone at all levels. This campaign is a big step towards socio-economic equality by bringing the underprivileged segments of Indian population into the formal banking fold for the first time.

“Swabhimaan” is a path-breaking initiative by the Government and the Indian Banks’ Association to cover economic distance between rural and urban India. This campaign promises to bring basic banking services to 73,000 unbanked villages with a population of 2,000 and above by March, 2012 and at least 5 crore new accounts will be opened. The movement will facilitate opening of banks accounts, provide need-based credit, remittance facilities and help to promote financial literacy in rural India. The programme will increase the demand for credit among the millions of small and marginal farmers and rural artisans who will benefit by having access to banking facilities.

This financial inclusion campaign named, “Swabhimaan” aims at providing branchless banking services through the use of technology. The vision for this programme is social application of modern technology. Banks will provide basic services like deposits, withdrawals and remittances using the services of Business Correspondents also known as Bank Saathi. This initiative also enables Government subsidies and social security benefits to now be directly credited to the accounts of the beneficiaries so that they could draw the money from the Business Correspondents in their village itself. The Government hopes to reach the benefits of micro insurance and micro pension products to the masses through this banking linkage. It would now be possible for the large number of migrant workers in urban areas to remit money to their relatives in distant villages quickly and safely.