Role of Regional Rural Banks in Financial Inclusion in India: An Exploratory Study

Financial inclusion is a combination of two words, i.e., finance and inclusion, which means an inclusive way of empowering people or citizens with the benefits of financial accessibility at grassroots level.Over the years, financial inclusion has become an increasingly potent and successful method for empowerment, and poverty alleviation since it offers financial services to people belonging to lowincome groups who are generally barred from traditional banking facilities.The goal of financial inclusion is to empower individuals economically by facilitating their entry to formal financial system and utilization of them.Financial access has the potential to significantly improve the financial situation and living standards of the poor and disadvantaged group.As a result, the RBI has consistently encouraged the Regional Rural Banking sector to expand its network by opening new branches and acknowledge the flight of rural populations, the Indian government embark on number of attempts to Cheer up the growth of the rural based financial inclusion.Among these measures, the most significant was the enlargement of Regional Rural Banks (RRBs).Over the years, RRBs have shown to be the most active agency in the process of developing the rural economy by providing loans and stimulate deposits from rural regions through their boundless network, even in the country's most outlying places.In this context, this study aims to examine the role of Regional Rural Banks in financial inclusion for the past 5years from 2019 to 2023.This study is of exploratory in nature and relies on secondary data sources.The data has been collected from annual reports of various Govt.and Non-Govt.Institutions, Journals, websites of RBI and NABARD, Research articles etc.The aforesaid data show that, from 2019 to 2023, regional rural banks endorse a decrease in the number of banks, an increase in the amount of loans and deposits, and a very little change in the number of branches.