Jaideep Shenoy / The Hindu

• Dakshina Kannada district had missed out on the September 30 deadline of RBI
• Survey by NGOs has increased clientele of branches
• Syndicate Bank is making efforts to fulfill stipulations

Mangalore, Oct 8: Dakshina Kannada, referred to as the cradle of banking industry, is slowly but surely moving towards ‘financial inclusion’ as per the directives of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). It means extending the banking habit among the less privileged in urban and rural India and weaning them away from unorganized money markets and moneylenders.

As per the RBI guidelines, all households in the district are required to be brought under banking by making them open a savings bank account. Such accounts can be opened with nil or minimum balance. This concept is not new to people here since major banks have a door-to-door collection of small amounts for pigmy accounts. The branch network of banks in Dakshina Kannada is so well defined that there is one branch of a nationalised or primary agricultural credit cooperative society (PACCS) for a population of 3,100 people.

The district has 370 branches of different banks and 115 PACCS. Despite this, bankers here have accepted that it is their responsibility to reach out to those uninitiated to banking habit.

To achieve this objective, the bankers convened a special district consultative committee meeting on June 14, 2007 to take up the task of total financial inclusion. All villages and wards in the district were allocated to bank branches based on service area concept so that it was easy for them to conduct survey and get nil or minimum balance accounts opened by every family. Data obtained from zilla Panchayat was taken as the guideline for the survey.

The bankers entrusted the task of conducting the survey to non-government organisations, Navodaya Grama Vikasa Charitable Trust, Mangalore for Mangalore block, Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project, Dharmasthala for Bantwal, Puttur and Sullia blocks, and Nagarika Seva Trust, Guruvayanakere for Belthangady block. Authorities released joint advertisements seeking people to approach nearby branches and open accounts.

According to an official release (approach paper) by Syndicate Bank, which is lead bank for the district, this exercise had resulted in increasing the clientele of bank branches. It had helped the beneficiaries of many Government sponsored programmes such as Indira Awas Yojana, Rajiv Gandhi Rural Housing programme, and Ambedkar Housing programme.

The lead bank will get the district declared as financially included in the presence of Regional Director of the RBI, Deputy Commissioner, and Chief Executive Officer of the zilla Panchayat and executives of the bank at a function, shortly.

The bankers missed the September-30 deadline fixed by the Reserve Bank of India in this regard for they wanted to make sure that the district deserved to become financially included.