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nationally sponsored UID to the service provider, the government, the last mile agent and the end user. The role of
government and technology should also take DBT into consideration.
•
This report not only appeals to Indian sector but is also of great significance to stakeholders outside the country
therefore it is important to cover technology innovations, payment gateways and innovation by telecom companies
in context of financial inclusion.
•
The report should look at policy gaps that don’t allow to scale-up technology based innovations which are happening
elsewhere and not being allowed to be undertaken in India.
(Vipin Sharma, Shweta Banerjee, Ajay Tankha, Amit Arora, Pallavi Sen)
Direct Benefit Transfers
•
The government has become very important player in Financial Inclusion. The government’s initiatives related to
Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) and some of the initiatives taken in other states like MP need to be examined and
covered in the report.
•
The role of government and technology should also take DBT into consideration. DBT is an opportunity to create
an inclusive payment ecosystem and facilitate branchless banking. The entire initiative needs huge investments in
infrastructure at national, state and last mile level. What should be the nature of investment, like public or private
should also be considered.
(Ajay Tankha, Shweta Banerjee)
Closing Remarks By the Authors
•
Participants have brought wide range of issues which simply tells that financial inclusion is not as simple as the term
is generally understood. It has multiple layers to it with multiple complexities and diverse requirement of data sets
and analytical frameworks. We cannot have all of them in one report but we may have three rounds of report.
•
Most of the suggestions were really helpful and address the way we are going to write this report. One major part of
the challenge will be the compilation of the data. The report has become fairly complex over the last few years. One
interesting thing that has come out this year is about the excluded segments as far as financial inclusion is concerned.
We have to give space to the marginalized sections which are not very visible like PwDs, elderly etc. Largely we have
to position the report around inclusive growth debate, our effort will be to position financial inclusion in the larger
landscape of Inclusive growth. We also need to discuss about entitlements like social security, pensions, insurance in
a separate framework.
(Ajay Tankha, Tara Nair)
The roundtable ended with the concluding remarks from the lead authors.
