Abstract
Indian growth story of more than 60 years have ignited several burning questions. It is not easily expectable that India is home of largest number of poor and illiterate persons while out of eight richest people in the world, four are Indians. This twelfth largest economy at market exchange rate and forth largest by PPP has experienced a wide range of exclusion in terms of low agriculture growth rate, low quality employment growth, low level of human development, rural-urban division, gender based discrimination, social stratification consequences, regional disparities etc. during a long chase of economic growth. After Eleventh Five Year plan, inclusive growth has become the core concern of policy initiatives which involves “(i) achieving sustainable growth that will create and expand economic opportunities, and (ii) ensuring broader access to these opportunities so that members of society can participate in and benefit from growth”. Finance is the inevitable need of economic growth and so access and availability of financial services to all, financial inclusion, becomes a pre-condition of inclusive and sustainable growth. Although RBI and the Government have done a lot to improve the quantity and quality of financial services so that it can reach to every sector, section and area of the country but it fell short of target to include everyone in the beneficiary net. There are very alarming evidences that till today a larger portion of our society- especially poor class, rural people and women- are suffering of exclusion from financial formal services. Our popular prime minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, has taken financial inclusion as a mission and launched a number of schemes along with other existing programmes being liked with banking system to ensure that every Indian has a bank account and insurance policy so that he will get access of financial product and can plan his income and expenditure accordingly. There are signs that financial inclusion has taken a speed never before but the need is to educate and facilitate the people to become habitual of banking system which is the ultimate aim envisaged by RBI. There are intrinsic hurdles in way of financial inclusion and inclusive growth, but the need is to tackle these issues profoundly to ensure India shining a world economic power in days to come.
Key-Words / Index Term
Financial Inclusion, Financial Exclusion, Inclusive Growth
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