India's rural households continued to remain financially excluded prominently compared to urban households particularly with respect to their access to institutional credit. Nearly half (44%) of the credit requirements of rural households is still met through non-institutional sources of finance...

This text is concerned with the increasingly important and problematic area of financial exclusion, broadly defined as the inability and/or reluctance of particular societal groups to access mainstream financial services. This has emerged as a major international policy issue. There is growing...