Banking services and financial inclusion in India’s poorest regions

Indrajeet Kumar ()

Journal of Banking Regulation, 2024, vol. 25, issue 2, No 4, 145-159

Abstract: Abstract Financial inclusion involves providing suitable products and services to meet transactional, payment, savings, credit, and insurance needs. While India has progressed in financial inclusion, challenges persist in low-income regions and among marginalised groups. This study assesses the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI) 2019–2024 and its potential to address such challenges in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. Field inquiries and interviews with households and bank managers were conducted. The findings reveal that despite NSFI’s potential, unawareness, insufficient income, documentation requirements, and lack of trust in the system is persisting and factors such as- region, social groups, gender, age, education, and occupation continue to influence banking participation. So, the study recommends increased awareness, financial literacy, and reduced financial service costs tailored to Bihar’s needs and other low-income regions. In addition, strengthening the regulatory framework for informal financial services is suggested.

Keywords: NSFI; Financial inclusion; PMJDY; Households; Bankers; Bihar; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41261-023-00224-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jbkreg:v:25:y:2024:i:2:d:10.1057_s41261-023-00224-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/finance/journal/41261/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41261-023-00224-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Banking Regulation is currently edited by Dalvinder Singh

More articles in Journal of Banking Regulation from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().