Theme: Financial Lives of Poor Households

Imagine you are a labourer in a village in Odisha and have painstakingly completed your Aadhaar formalities (for which you gave a proof of permanent address and your fingerprints).

This post is the first in a series on Social Security for the Indian Unorganised Sector.

Financial inclusion and financial deepening have an important role to play in promoting economic growth and reducing poverty and inequality, while mitigating systemic risk and maintaining financial stability.

The development of
critical complementary
infrastructure for customer
data

The CCFS Report has laid out a vision for Sufficient Access to Affordable Formal Credit that places a goal of achieving a Credit to GDP ratio for each district of atleast 10% by January 1, 2016, and to cross 50% by January 1, 2020.

Financial inclusion is a priority area in the minds of policy makers in India. The larger focus of this debate has been on access to credit and insurance.

A few months earlier IDFC Foundation had prepared the “India Rural Development Report 2012/13” which provided a wide perspective on the rural landscape covering the Rural dynamics, Livelihoods, Inclusion, Infrastructure, Sustainability and a review of major central government rural programmes and schemes and, in particular, the flagship MGNREGA.

Social Security is widely seen as a fundamental building block of a just and equitable society. While ideas of welfare, pension and charity have been with us since the times of the earliest civilizations, the modern concept of social security can arguably trace its origins to the aftermath of the industrial revolution.

The twin calamities
A few weeks ago, Bindu and I visited Dhanei KGFS that serves the districts of Ganjam and Khurda through a network of thirty branches.

This post is a follow-up to our earlier post which briefed about the mapping exercise that IFMR Rural Finance had undertaken to study the service area of a KGFS Branch.