After a slow progress of the financial inclusion drive last year, bankers have set a target to provide banking access to each village above a population of 2,000 by 2012. The state, according to bank data, has only 2,736 villages out of a total of 52,000, which have a population above 2,000. Bankers in the state have, however, no immediate plans to cover those villages which have a population below 2,000.
“We will cover all villages above 2,000 population under the financial inclusion programme by 2012,” S Sridhar, chairman of Central Bank of India, and state level bankers committee said here.
The state government had earlier refused bankers’ demand of two per cent commission to execute the task. During year 2008-09, a huge amount under various government sponsored schemes like NREGA was lying in the state’s kitty, as the Central government had made payment of these schemes mandatory through banking.
Last year, the state government had warned the bankers it would otherwise use its own cooperative and regional rural bankers’ network if the financial inclusion programme or banking facility in rural areas was not ensured.
“Now, private bankers are also actively participating in financial inclusion programme,” Sridhar said. Adding, “We will hopefully attain the targets by December. We will also be covering more villages through IT-enabled financial inclusion programme in unbanked (sic) villages”. The state has 5,460 bank branches and 2,673 automatic teller machines.
Labourers and farmers have to either toil miles to reach a bank or wait for more than a month for the payment to come into their accounts. “There are cases in tribal-dominated areas where bankers deny immediate payment to labourers and it takes a month or more for them to claim their remuneration,” a senior state government official informed Business Standard, adding, “The state government is persistently urging bankers to ensure banking facilities in rural areas through IT-enabled financial inclusion programme but there is no breakthrough”.
In February, Reserve Bank of India Governor D Subbarao, on his visit to Bhopal, had also asked bankers to achieve the target of providing banking facility to all villages with more than 2,000 population by 2012.
