Impacts of Financial Inclusion on Sustainable Development in India

Impacts of Financial Inclusion on Sustainable Development in India

The ultimate motive of the paper is to establish whether financial inclusion (FI) has a consequential impact on the Sustainable Development (SD) of India. This study uses one model for the assessment of the influence of FI through the Co-Operative bank network on SD. This is purposely done to analyze the absolute impact of the role of the Co-Operative bank network in the said context. The sample encompasses data taken from 28 states and 3 Union Territories for two years (FY2018-FY2020). Assessment of data for the remaining Union Territories is not undertaken for the reason of the non-availability of data for other Union Territories. This study uses Panel Data Analysis (PDA) to establish the nexus of the relation between the said variables. Results of this study reveal elevated levels of SD resultant of increased FI thereby indicating a positive and significant relationship between the said variables. Unlike previous studies, this study gives India-specific significant findings, which suggests policy formulation for increasing the numbers and improving the governance of Co-Operative bank networks for SD. Co-Operative bank network as a proxy despite having high weighted significance in FI has not been incorporated in any recent study as per the last updated knowledge of authors.