Financial Inclusion In Rural India Through Post Office – An Analytical Study

Abstract

The term financial inclusion was coined to financially strengthen all the people in formal financial sector in every part of the world. This is a very important consideration for both developing and developed countries. Thus, the ultimate objective of launching a financial inclusion program in India was to include all people in the formal financial sector, in specific unbanked and rural areas. Though, many formal financial institutions in India are involved in financial inclusion programme, India post is the largest physical network institution in India. Therefore, the role of post office in financial inclusion program in sample village was examined in this study. The descriptive research method was adopted. The data collected for the study was both qualitative as well as quantitative in nature and collected from both primary and secondary sources. Poompuhar village was selected purposively.  In this village post office plays vital role to provide financial services. The researcher tried to get number of customer from sample post office, but the postal official did not give the list of customer due to government policies.  Hence, the population of the study was treated as unknown.  To determine the sample size, the unknown sample size Cohran formula was used.  From the formula there are 384 customers is determined as sample respondent.  The result of the study shows that, irrespective of different aspects i.e., availability, access, cost, usage and reliability of using postal financial services majority of the sample users states that the post office provides better financial services to include the rural people in formal financial sector in the study area.