BANK ACCOUNT FOR ALL BY 2016:- A TRUTH OR A LOLLIPOP

In a report made by Committee on Comprehensive Financial Services for Small business and Low-income household, ex-ICICI Bank executive-director Nachiket Mor claimed that by Jan 1,2016, every major citizen of age above 18 years, will have an individual, full-service, safe, and secure electronic bank account. The committee claimed that the way  they are progressing towards the development in every sector , they  will achieve the same in 2016. The two RBI members suggested that the date must be extended to 2018 because it is very difficult to achieve the same up to that period. But it totally depends on the will power of the government, whether they would be able to continue the same pace up to 2016 or not?

But when we look into the reality, almost 60 percent of the Indians didn’t have their accounts in national, private, commercial or any kind of banks .They are still unaware of the services and the rights which they have in the resources of the country. So, how could it be possible to open bank accounts for almost 60 percent of the people of India? The truth behind this is that they don’t have the money circulation or in another words we can say that they don’t have the money in surplus which they can keep in their respective account. Illiteracy plays an important role. Until the government doesn’t provide the basic education and doesn’t make the proper arrangement to uproot poverty and illiteracy by providing proper place to learn and place to earn money. If they will not, the whole project becomes useless and non-functional. No revolution could be made.

The government and RBI claims that the ADHAR number allotted to the citizens will make the loan taking procedure easier, especially to the people residing in rural areas.  But, in reality when we look at the progress of allotment of ADHAR numbers, the conditions are almost the same as that of Bank account. Almost 60 percent of the Indians still didn’t get the ADHAR number. The agency who are making and allotting the ADHARs, faces lots of problems and errors in the documents presented by the people . In big states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh the government are not getting the agencies which could help and form the ADHAR numbers. So it’s still a big dream which is still very far from our reach.

In INDIA , 70 percent didn’t get loan from the bank. Almost 50 percent of the people are from agricultural background and engaged in agriculture. In reality, it is very difficult to get the agricultural loan because the process is very tough. The farmers have to go to PATWARI for the assessment of their land, after assessing they have to go to the bank manager and after that the real fight starts. Because, in the process they don’t get the required amount of loan they wanted and at the same time if the loan is allotted for the seeds they can’t invest the money in purchasing the agricultural instrument or anything related to it. If they do so the interest on that is charged at commercial rates and if they want a separate loan they have to go with same process once again. So, we can analyse the situation of bank loans.

Another important fact is that 10 percent branches of different banks are situated only in six cities. That means rural areas still lag behind the required number of banks. Government in today’s time provides a lot of subsidies to the banks so that they will maintain the new branches and also the deficit if any. So, it totally depends on the government whether they will be able to provide subsidies in coming years or not. At the same time private banks don’t want to go to the rural areas because they don’t find that much profit over there. But now, while issuing the license to the private sector banks, government started imposing conditions that some of the branches of the private sector banks must be opened in rural areas. Let’s see, will it change the scenario of the rural areas or not.

RBI is claiming to provide bank accounts to every major citizen  by 2016 and to provide them  facilities of withdrawal, payment etc. within every 15 minutes walking distances. Let’s see, upto what extent they would be successful in that.