Social and economic change by Financial Inclusion

Subhash Dsouza Assistant Professor, St.Joseph College, Mumbai University

Subhash.sof@gmail.com

Financial education is emerging as a global hot topic. According to the United Nations, three billion people around the world do not have access to formal financial services like savings accounts, credit, insurance, and payment services. More than half the populations in developing countries and more than 80 percent of households in most of Africa are financially excluded. Financial inclusion aims to provide the timely delivery of various financial services at an affordable price to those financially excluded households and micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. There is urgent need of financial education specially to the illiterate segment of the society. Providing banking facilities across length and breadth of the country, particularly in rural areas, has always been a great challenge for the successive governments since Independence. Nationalization gave a big boost to expansion of banks in rural areas with Public Sector Banks becoming important instruments for advancement of rural banking and changing lives of rural populace. However, financial inclusion remains one of the biggest challenges before our nation even today as only about 38% of bank branches are in rural areas and only 40% (approx.) of the countrys population have bank accounts. The great challenge before us is to address the constraints that exclude people from full participation in the financial sector. Together we can and must build inclusive financial sectors that help people improve their lives.For this purpose financial education to the society is must because people are not yet aware of various financial services. This article focuses on :1) Financial Education 2) Rural development and Financial Education 3)IRDP through Financial Education 4)Strategies for Financial Education. Financial inclusiveness policies are a major thrust area of millennium development goals adopted by U.N. In India the policy of inclusiveness has been adopted since the beginning of last decade

of 20th century. In 1991-92 the Government of India understood the role and importance of inclusive growth with the advent of liberalization. The economy started picking up higher growth rate and at the same time it witnessed uneven sections of the resulted in society benefits and fruits of wealth. A few selected

were becoming wealthier but a large section was neglected. This

chaotic catastrophic situation and therefore attention was given to adopt

inclusive policies which would help the deprived, neglected and outcaste sections of the society to come in the main stream of economic growth. The concept of financial inclusiveness is thus not related with pure aspect of economic development but it has social dimensions too. The instruments of implementing financial inclusiveness are varied .They can be adopted considering situation and social context. Therefore the agencies like co-operatives, Regional Rural Banks, Self Help Groups can work as right instrument of social and economic changes. It is interesting phenomena of urban co-operative credit societies sector that 40% of there resources are being utilized in social-welfare activities. There 25% of total loans to the weaker section of society. These statistics affectively highlight the role played by these sectors in financing self employment and in supporting to weaker section of society.
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