Towards Financial Inclusion in India: Progress so far, Issues and Challenges

Financial Inclusion is one of the yardsticks to measure the growth of an economy as well as human well-being. Financial sector inclusion helps in eliminating poverty, reducing inequality and eliminating unequal access to opportunities etc. The major findings of this study shows that financial inclusion indicators such as: Geographic branch penetration (Number of Schedule Commercial Banks branches per 1000 km² demographic branch penetration (Number of Schedule Commercial Banks branches per 100000 population), and demographic ATM penetration (Number of Schedule Commercial Banks ATMs per 100000 population) has been increasing in different census period (1991, 2001 and 2011) of India. The performance of Urban Cooperative Banks in case of deposits and advances are also increasing from 2001 to 2011. It is also revealed that the number of accounts of Public Sector Banks, Private Banks and Regional Rural Banks are more in rural area comparison to urban area in 2015. Overall the result of this study justifying progress of financial inclusion and some recent initiatives taken by the government of India.