Banking in rural areas in Madhya Pradesh is still a distant dream. Against the target of making rural banking available through the financial inclusion programme in only 2,736 villages with above 2,000 population by March this year, bankers have till now been able to cover only 130 villages.
Although the target has now been extended from March 2011 to March 2012 the bankers in Madhya Pradesh have been instructed to reach the target by March this year. “So far bankers have covered only 12 villages with hardly one or two villages in each district other than Ujjain where 43 villages above the population range of 2,000 have access to banks and 50 villages in Singrauli have banking facility. The bankers are not interested and if they are, they are exchanging the villages allotted to them with other bankers and sponsored regional rural banks,” a state government source informed.
The Union Ministry of Finance had instructed the bankers to draw out a monthwise plan for the villages above the population range of 2,000. “They have also been asked to make plans taking the banks into consideration, but it is not happening in Madhya Pradesh,” the source said, adding, “Even the state government has come up with a scheme of providing subsidised rates for hand-held machines, smart cards of biometric ATM to an extent of 50 per cent or Rs 10,000 whichever is less. In other terms it is 50 per cent subsidy on smart cards costing Rs 60 per card, whichever is less and for biometric ATM the 25 per cent subsidy or Rs 1 lakh per ATMs offered by the state government. Neither the government banks, nor the private bankers have come forward to extend financial inclusion services in rural areas. Even this facility is expected to be extended in all the slum areas of Indore, Bhopal, Gwalior and Jabalpur. A cabinet committee of state government has also been constituted to monitor the progress.