IJRM Past Issues

Financial inclusion has become matter of concern for all stakeholders. Measures with varying intensity are being taken by every stakeholder to improve the situation. But, unless the impact of those initiatives is measured, it will not be possible to decide future course of action.

There are various indicesdeveloped to measure the financial inclusion. All of them measure only banking related initiatives. Recent focus on financial inclusion has also included other financial services like insurance, pension, financial literacy, and remittances in its fold. We have taken into consideration other financial servicesin addition to banking services, and have tried to measure financial inclusion based on indicators of three dimensions, namely demand, supply, and infrastructure as suggested by Ambarkhane, Singh, and Venkataramani, (2014). This index also takes into account the impact of negative factors termed as drag factors on financial inclusion.

The index is developed for 21 major states of the country and ranking is done. Comparison with other studies is made which shows that index computed,corroborates with them and focuses on poor.