Minister stresses financial inclusion of rural women and youth, strengthening of Digital Panchayats and SHG-bank linkages
Ranchi: Expanding banking services to every village and providing greater financial opportunities to women and youth are among the key priorities of the Jharkhand government, said Rural Development, Rural Works and Panchayati Raj Minister Deepika Pandey Singh.
She was speaking at the 97th quarterly meeting of the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC), Jharkhand, held at the Jharkhand Secretariat under the chairpersonship of Finance Minister Radhakrishna Kishore. During the meeting, she highlighted the need to strengthen rural banking infrastructure, expand Digital Panchayat services and improve credit linkages for Self-Help Groups (SHGs).
The minister emphasised that rural development schemes can achieve their intended impact only when banking facilities reach people in every village. She called for increasing the number of bank branches and ATMs in remote rural areas and ensuring accessible banking services for rural residents.
Referring to the Digital Panchayat initiative, Deepika Pandey Singh said the Panchayati Raj Department was working to equip Panchayat buildings with digital facilities. With the support of Common Service Centres (CSCs), the initiative aims to provide various citizen-centric and digital services to rural residents at their local Panchayat buildings.
She informed the meeting that 673 Panchayats were identified in the first phase of the initiative, of which 335 locations received approval from banks. In the second phase, out of 1,848 selected locations, 571 received banking approval.
The minister said connecting Panchayats with digital and financial services would reduce the need for rural residents to travel long distances to access essential services. Panchayat buildings could consequently emerge as effective service delivery centres at the grassroots level.
Highlighting the contribution of more than 32 lakh rural women associated with Self-Help Groups, she said these women had demonstrated their financial capabilities through sound financial discipline and strong credit records. She stressed the need to provide more opportunities to these women as Bank Sakhis and Banking Correspondents (BCs), while further strengthening the credit linkages of SHGs with banks.
She said the initiative would not only expand banking services in rural areas but also enable women to play an active role in financial inclusion and become economically self-reliant.
The minister also highlighted the department's objective of promoting rural women's entrepreneurship and rural industrialisation through the 'Nari' scheme. She called for developing pilot projects in every district of the state in collaboration with banks.
Emphasising employment opportunities for trained youth, she said young people trained at Rural Self Employment Training Institutes (RSETIs) must receive timely bank credit to establish their own enterprises and pursue self-employment. For this, better coordination between banks and concerned government departments was essential.
Deepika Pandey Singh observed that training alone was not sufficient to promote entrepreneurship and self-employment in rural areas. Ensuring access to institutional finance and bank loans after training was equally important.
She said empowering women and youth through financial opportunities would strengthen the rural economy and make it self-reliant. Better coordination among banking institutions, government departments and grassroots organisations would further improve the implementation of rural development programmes.
Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Cooperation Minister Shilpi Neha Tirkey, senior officials from various departments, representatives of the Reserve Bank of India and officials of different banks attended the meeting.
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