What household finance tells us about financial inclusion in India

In this blog, we will highlight some interesting facts about agricultural households from the survey through a set of questions that can help contextualise the financial lives of farmers and their families.

This blog presents key insights from the second round of the survey report, NAFIS 2021-22, and finds that the rural households’ investment portfolio continues to be dominated by physical assets, which is in contrast with the predominance of formal debt on the liabilities side of the household balance sheets.

According to a report by Crif High Mark, microfinance loans overdue for up to 31-180 days increased from 2.1% in March 2024 to 2.7% in June 2024. While there could be several supply-side factors at play for the rise in defaults, in this blog we direct our attention to reviewing the household side of the story by assessing the changes in household balance sheets post the COVID-19 pandemic.

How can finance be designed and structured for agriculture, farmers, agricultural households, agrarian communities and the larger economy so as to ensure economic equity, social well-being, and environmental sustainability?

This paper aims to document the unique characteristics of the financial lives of low-income households in India. It focuses on the intra-year fluctuations in income that are faced by these households owing to the precarity of their occupations.

For two decades, India has doubled down on the policy prescription of providing financial ‘last-mile access’ to its rural and poor citizens. Has the effort succeeded? It depends on who you ask.