Financial Inclusion And Poverty Alleviation In India

Since independence in 1947, the government of India and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have made concerted efforts to provide the poor with access to credit. Despite the phenomenal increase in the physical outreach of formal credit institutions in the past several decades, India's rural poor continue to depend on informal sources of credit. Institutions have also faced difficulties in dealing effectively with a large number of small borrowers whose credit needs are small and frequent and their ability to offer collaterals is limited. Cumbersome procedures and risk perceptions of the banks have left a gap in serving the credit needs of the rural poor. This has led to a search for alternative policies, systems and procedures, saving and loan products, other complementary services, and new delivery mechanisms that would fulfill the requirements of the poor. It is in this context that micro credit has emerged as the most suitable and practical alternative to conventional banking in reaching the hitherto unreached poor population. Micro finance is the provision of a broad range of financial services - such as deposits, loans, payments, money transfers, and insurance - to the low-income households and their micro enterprises. The basic purpose of micro finance is to provide access to financial assistance, including credit to the poor, enabling them to start/expand micro enterprises and break out of poverty. Micro credit helps the poor in making available the credit and other financial services for improving their income and living standards. The micro credit program - which was formally heralded in 1992 with a modest pilot project of linking around 500 Self-help Groups - has made rapid strides in India, exhibiting considerable democratic functioning and group dynamism. The micro credit program in India is now the largest in the world. This book contains 45 scholarly papers in the field of micro finance in India, categorized in five parts: Micro Finance: General Observations . Micro Finance, Self-help Groups, and Financial Inclusion . Micro Finance, Poverty Alleviation, and Empowerment of Women . Technical Aspects of Micro Finance . Micro Finance: Case Studies in India and Abroad.

It examines why so many years after Independence, India still has a large number of poor and points towards vote-bank politics as a key culprit in choosing poor policy options that could never deliver optimally. Poverty alleviation measures adopted by Narendra Modi during his tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat, were a greater success compared to other states. The book identifies the key success factors for financial inclusion – a credit and livelihood based approach as well as a gendered view of inclusion; sustainable development; skill development; financial literacy; push for MSMEs; employment and focus on hygiene and health. Thus, making the Modi model, called ModiNomics, as one of the proven approaches that can take financial inclusion to its logical conclusion. The model comes close to the author’s academic work, understanding of ModiNomics and years of research that has a great potential for its replication nationally. Given that the end-objective of financial inclusion is poverty alleviation, at Skoch Group, we have been unyielding in our advocacy of equitable growth with the three critical elements attached to it: financial, social and digital inclusion. The book proposes a model for bringing all these elements together and also suggests ways for the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana to be financially viable, selfsustaining and emerge as India’s main weapon for defeating poverty.

More than one billion people still live below the poverty line – most of them in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Financial inclusion is a major issue, as more than three-quarters of the numbers of poor and disadvantaged women and men do not have access to financial products and services, such as bank accounts, affordable and suitable loans, and insurance. The key objective of this book is to provide practical case studies of financial inclusion, rather than focus on academic debates such as the ideological basis of promoting microfinance. Using the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals as an overall framing of the issues, it shows how poor and disadvantaged women and men can be bankable if the right facilitation for maximizing opportunities and addressing constraints are in place. Case studies confirm that achieving inclusive and sustainable access to financial products and services goes beyond simply enabling poor and disadvantaged women and men to have access to credit, or the ability to open a bank account. Examples from Africa, Asia and Latin America demonstrate encouraging progress in making microcredit accessible to millions of poor people. The foremost challenge, however, has been to ensure that they have access to, and usage intensity of, suitable and affordable financial products and services that meet the needs of their livelihoods as well as risks and mitigation strategies. This requires understanding that poor and disadvantaged women and men do not exist in isolation from complex and interdependent functions in the financial system, which includes a number of actors, diversified services, constraints (not just symptoms) and capacities and incentives. Overall, the book provides a rich source of examples of how building inclusive financial systems can empower the world's poor – by increasing income and employment opportunities, securing livelihoods and reducing poverty.

Having understood the necessity of poverty alleviation alongside financial inclusion through microfinance intervention, this book makes an attempt to fill the knowledge gap in relation to the potential synergies among microfinance, poverty alleviation and financial inclusion. As a part of empirical study, it examines the correlation between poverty alleviation and financial inclusion by thoroughly analyzing the key microfinance models such as SHG-Bank Linkage Program (SBLP) model, Microfinance Institutions (MFI) model and Business Correspondent (BC) Model; and offers some interesting observations, which are quite relevant in the present policy context. It also makes an effort to address one of the fundamental questions as to why the poor, especially women are unabatedly depending upon MFIs, despite the successful functioning of SBLP model in fulfilling the same objective. This book is a reminder of the fact that any effort to achieve complete financial inclusion without alleviating poverty is a futile exercise and financial inclusion would be successful only if financial literacy is vigorously promoted along with poverty alleviation schemes and programs.

This bookexamines inclusive growth in a range of social and economic areas in India, including physical infrastructure, vulnerable sections of the population and underdeveloped states. It provides a comprehensive study of disparity and deepens insight into understanding processes of economic and social development.

Inclusive growth needs to be achieved to reduce poverty and other disparities and raise economic growth. This book develops a poverty profile for India in view of the ongoing national and global efforts toward ensuring inclusive growth and bringing poverty levels down. This poverty profile will enable academics and policy makers to reassess and improve on the existing methodologies in estimating poverty rates, evaluate the effectiveness of existing poverty programs, and suggest alternative and complementary options for strategic intervention based on the lessons drawn from program implementation both at the state and national levels.

The term "financial inclusion" means a comprehensive and holistic process of ensuring access to financial services and credit by vulnerable and marginalised groups in the society. Inclusive growth means broad-based benefits to all sections of people. The Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12) envisioned inclusive growth as a key objective. Indias Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17) with its focus on Faster, More Inclusive and Sustainable Growth, has put the growth debate in the right perspective. Growth is inclusive when it creates economic opportunities, along with ensuring equal access to them. The concept inclusion should be seen as a process of including the excluded as agents whose participation is essential in the very design of the development process and not simply as welfare targets of development programmes. Indian economy has made rapid strides in the recent past. However, a sizeable section of the population continues to remain excluded from even the most basic opportunities and services provided by the financial sector. The present volume contains 12 scholarly papers -- authored by experts in the field of finance and development policy -- which provide deep insights into various aspects of financial inclusion and inclusive growth efforts in India.