A high-level committee of the Reserve Bank of India headed by deputy governor Usha Thorat has set the target of providing financial services to every village by March 2011. The RBI committee has recommended that a sub-committee of the District Consultative Committee (DCC) may draw up a road map to provide banking services in any form to every village with a population of over 2,000 at least once a week on a regular basis by March 2011 and in states where banking penetration is better the date may be suitably advanced. As there are only around 47,000 branches of scheduled commercial banks at rural and semi-urban centres,penetration of banking in several parts of the country is still limited. The panel said private sector banks should involve themselves more actively by bringing in their expertise in strategic planning and leveraging on information technology.
