Promoting Financial Inclusion - United Nations Development ...

anks and RRBs rather than provide
significant support to bereaved families.
Even so, the 20 million lives insured in this
way provide cover to around 15% of an
estimated 140 million financially excluded
households.
In addition, the government is
increasingly launching safety net
programmes through the device of
insurance policies, effectively transferring
the implementation responsibility to the
insurance companies. Thus there are now
reported to be some 23.6 million smart
cards issued under the Rashtriya Swasthya
Bima Yojana, a health insurance scheme for
informal sector workers. The scheme has
many empanelled hospitals and incorporates
hospitalisation benefits up to `30,000 per
family of five (below the poverty line).
3.6 COVERAGE OF THE
COOPERATIVE SYSTEM –
EXTENSIVE OUTREACH,
INTENSIVE PROBLEMS
The cooperative system consists of Primary
Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS)
at the grass roots level, followed by District
Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) at the
middle and State Cooperative Banks (StCBs)
at the apex. The StCBs are federated as the
National Federation of State Cooperative
Banks (NAFSCOB). 10 The Cooperative
Credit Structure (CCS) is depicted in
Figure 3.5 below.
FIGURE 3.5 The Cooperative Credit Structure.
Short term credit
Cooperative Banks
Long term credit
State Cooperative
Agriculture and Rural
Development Banks
(SCARDBs)
31 SCBs, 992 branches 20 SCARDBs
373 DCCBs, 13,233 branches
864 branches 696 PCARDBs
95,663 PACS
Depositors and Borrowers
Primary Cooperative
Agriculture and Rural
Development Banks
(PCARDBs)
State Cooperative
Banks (SCBs)
District Central
Cooperative Banks
(DCCBs)
Among these institutions PACS are
in direct interface with farmers and low
income families (mainly) in rural areas and
provide them with short and medium term
credit. A large number of PACS also serve
as outlets for the public distribution system
(PDS) for the supply of food and other
essential items. There were 94,647 PACS
on March 31, 2010 with a membership base
of around 126 million members. Table 3.8
summarizes the current outreach of PACS.
REGIONAL SPREAD OF PACS
The PACS are spread evenly across most
of the regions of the country except the
North-Eastern and Western regions. The
NE region accounts for just 3.7% of PACS
while the Western region has 30.7%. In
10
NAFSCOB was established on May 19, 1964
with a view to facilitate the operations of State
and Central Cooperative Banks in general and
Development of Cooperative Credit in particular.
www.nafscob.org.
14 PROMOTING FINANCIAL INCLUSION