Inclusive economic growth through financial inclusion in selected rural areas of district Punjab

Now-a-days ICTs {Information and Communication Technologies} are being used in many fields specially in banking to improve the efficiency, reliability and ease of operation. They are widely used in the form of mobiles ATMs, biometric smart cards, mobile banking and so on. Branchless banking in the form of Business Correspondents and Business Facilitators is one of the major initiatives of RBI in this direction through which they are able to reach the unbanked population.

The paper includes the understanding of the Business Correspondent model and its working i.e. the enrollment process and the transactions through biometric smart cards. The survey was also conducted among rural people to know the penetration of banking in the interior areas of district Amritsar. Paper also focuses on the problems of the BCs and the rural people and includes the suggestions on the basis of research conducted.

Microfinance and Information and Communication Technology (ICT), in their own right, can be argued to have a lasting impact on the social and economic order. However, to have an even more profound impact, these different approaches to orchestrating change- social and economic- will have to integrate and collaborate, in a way that ensures actualizing of a more holistic development framework that beat leverages the respective strengths of both microfinance and ICT.