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for assessing and implementing the credit requirements of the district should
be placed under him. The District Development Manager (DDM) of NABARD
should be a member of the team. The Annual Credit Plan based on Potential
Liked Credit Plan (PLCP) for each district prepared by NABARD should, in
fact, be prepared in close consultation with District Lead Manager and other
functionaries from line departments. The plan should have added focus on
agriculture, including animal husbandry and horticultural development. In
fact, there is little agriculture in the whole credit plan in the current scheme
of things. It is important that while preparing such plans, the scientist in-
charge of the Krishi Vigyan Kendra located in that district should be actively
involved. Once the plan is ready, it should be discussed threadbare in a meeting
chaired by Deputy Commissioner and attended by all involved including the
scientist in-charge of the Krishi Vigyan Kendra. And once the plan is finalized,
it should be mandatory to implement the plan and accomplish the targets. The
Lead District Manger should be responsible for implementing the plan. For
this, he should be provided with adequate infrastructure and technology like
computers.
Renewed Emphasis on the Lead Bank Scheme in the Usha Thorat High-
Level Committee
The Report of the High-Level Committee to Review the Lead Bank
Scheme (Chairperson: Usha Thorat, August 2009) has raised the overall policy
perspective on the institutional framework of the Lead Bank Scheme to a higher
plateau. Emphasizing its usefulness, the Committee designed the overarching
objective of the Lead Bank Scheme as enabling banks and state governments to
work together to achieve the national goals of financial inclusion and inclusive
growth, which are two sides of the same coin. At one level, this inclusive growth
requires a comprehensive programme for achieving financial inclusion both by
achieving extensive penetration of banking outlets through various forms (brick
and mortar branches, mobile banking, extension counters, satellite offices and
business correspondents) and by promoting better credit culture and credit-
plus initiatives by banks. The Committee has ordained that “In the light of
the above
,
the Committee recommends that the scope of the Scheme may be
broadened to specifically cover financial inclusion, role of State Governments,
financial literacy and credit counselling, 'credit plus' activities, formulation
of time bound monitorable action plans to facilitate 'enablers' and remove /
minimise 'impeders' for banking development for inclusive growth and debt
settlement and grievance redressal mechanisms (p.29). At another level, the
state and district-level Development Plans have to aim at inclusive growth.
