NIAS Wednesday Discussion: “Financial Inclusion in India: An Exploration of Supply and Demand side Issues” by Kshitija Joshi, Lecture Hall, 0930 hrs
NIAS Wednesday Discussion Meeting
Topic: “Financial Inclusion in India: An Exploration of Supply and Demand side Issues”
Speaker: Kshitija Joshi
Post-
Chairperson: Narendar Pani
Professor & Head, RBI Programme on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Economic Issues. NIAS
Date: 24th August, 2016
Time: 9.30 am
Venue: Lecture Hall, NIAS
All are cordially invited
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Abstract: It has been increasingly recognized that access to and usage of formal financial services not only have a positive impact at the client and household levels but, if done sustainably and at scale, can have a broader positive impact on the overall national economic development by helping to lower transaction costs, managing risks, and mitigating economic inequalities. Financial Inclusion is particularly important for India as in spite of its high economic growth, more than 40 percent of its population still lacks access to basic banking services in 2011. Several efforts have been made over the past decade at expanding the reach of institutional financial services to hitherto unbanked and ‘excluded’ population segments. However, despite the supply-side efforts, the ‘usage’ of the same by the target population significantly lags behind. This leads us to believe, that merely facilitating the ‘access’ of financial services does not by itself guarantee their usage. The aim of the presentation is to explore the demand side of financial exclusion and in particular probe the factors that have driven the informal sector to be resilient in the face of institutional efforts made so far.
About the Speaker: Dr Kshitija Joshi is a Post-Doctoral Associate under the RBI programme on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Economic Issues. She had earlier worked in the financial sector, including the Reserve Bank of India, where she looked at various aspects of financial and consumer credit risk. She has several publications to her credit.
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Date:
Wednesday, August 24, 2016