Analysing the progress of financial inclusion in India

Abstract : In the context of modern India, it is widely accepted that nobody should be left out of coverage of banks and banking services – access to timely credit, deposits, insurance etc. It does not however imply that the access to affordable finances implies access only to banks but also the non-banking sector, given that there is a continued reliance on the latter in most sectors which are vital for development. Need for financial inclusion has only gone up in recent times as the financial system diversified over time. In this research paper, the authors analyzed the India’s journey so far, bringing out a few ignored factors which in their opinion appear to have an effect on the process of inclusion. The paper attempts to show that there are certain nonfinancial macroeconomic, infrastructural, and technological bottleneck that obstructs the momentum of the inclusion process. The data for the current analysis has been sourced from secondary sources available in public domain on the official websites of the Reserve Bank of India, CSO and NPCI. An exploratory ex-post-facto approach is followed as the methodology in order to arrive at the desired results. The paper adds to the existing literature by giving a broad overview of how Indian Financial Journey has been so far and stresses on what more can be done vis-à-vis shortcomings noted and opines that India has gained a lot by focusing more on Financial Inclusion after the economy opened up than when it was a closed economy.