India's first Financially Inclusive District

RBI governor D Subbarao declared Ernakulam as the first district in the country to achieve total and meaningful financial inclusion.
“Ernakulam was the first district in the country to achieve 100% family planning in 1970s. In 1990, Ernakulam was declared the first district to have 100% literacy. Today is the third step in the process… Ernakulam is becoming the first district in the country to achieve 100% financially inclusion,” Subbarao announced at a function attended by chief minister Oommen Chandy, finance minister K M Mani and Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India.
Meaningful financial inclusion project offers operative bank accounts with micro-credit, micro-insurance and remittances facilities to households. Subbarao said the district, with a population of 32 lakh, has 37 lakh savings bank accounts.
In his presidential address, he urged the state government to introduce curriculum on financial literacy in schools and colleges. The RBI has prepared a curriculum that has been translated into regional languages, including Malayalam. It was introduced in Karnataka four years ago on a pilot basis. “As much as we deepen financial inclusion, we also want people to understand what financial inclusion is, so that they must be able to demand services from banks. For this, financial literacy is important. We do have a number of things to deepen financial literacy—one of the most important actions we are taking is to request state governments to introduce curriculum on finance in schools and colleges,” he said.
Acknowledging the importance of education loans, Subbarao said the demand for such loans has been high in certain states. “There were some problems in Kerala, with some special area restrictions, but we have removed all those and I now hope that the flow of educational loans will go up ,” he said.