The 13th session of the seminar series will be conducted by Mr Rajatsingh Yadav, a PhD scholar at the Gokhale Institute, was conducted on 28 July 2022, Thursday, at 5:00 p.m. at the Seminar Hall, Main Building, in the campus.

Speaker: Mr Rajatsingh Yadav

Title: “Banking or Under-banking: Spatial Role of Financial Inclusion and Exclusion“

Abstract:

Access to a bank account is only a part of the problem when we talk of financial inclusion because several people with a bank account are not necessarily using them to deposit their savings or carry out transactions. This article makes an attempt to examine the reasons for the low utilisation of banking facilities. It employs financial inclusion insights (FII) data for the Indian population to find out an outcome of financial inclusion (and thus social inclusion as well) based on the usage of banking services with covariates like financial literacy, the probability that any financial service is accessible to the respondent in terms distance, type of mobile phone and spatial density. We use the truncated probit model to measure the incidence of under-banking. Our findings show that there is a negative association between supply-side constraints and usage of banking services, implying that low access to financial services in time and space stands as a hindrance to financial inclusion. Further, we find from the financial inclusion and exclusion map at the district level that even though economic agents intend to participate in the space in which he/she is living is not much inclusive.

Keywords

Financial inclusion, spatial exclusion, spatial density, dormant account, financial literacy.

This article is published with SAGE Publishing and the International Journal of Rural Management. Titled “Banking or Under-banking: Spatial Role of Financial Inclusion and Exclusion,” its complimentary e-copy is available here.

Chair: Dr K S Hari, Associate Dean, Research