Poverty of access to financial services and its alleviation: some lessons to India from the United Kingdom

The measures initiated in India to achieve higher financial inclusion have very high potentials to tackle this dimension of poverty but have yet to go a long way in main-streaming the financially excluded sections in rural areas. As compared to the success achieved in the United Kingdom in terms of the outreach of financial services, access to affordable credit and other benefits to the hitherto deprived sections, appropriate policy interventions on the part of the Indian government and the financial system with effective mechanisms to tackle the existing high incidence of financial exclusion are yet to be in place. This research mainly reviews the policy initiatives, including considering the main recommendations of the task forces on financial inclusion of both the countries and offers an alternative framework for tackling the poverty of access to financial services of the financially excluded people of India.