Just to illustrate, according to a 2010 report by Pratham, an NGO focused on education, only 17 per cent of children in classes 1 to 8 in rural areas have the ability to read a word and only 40 per cent are able to recognize numbers. Seventh challenge: promoting financial inclusion 40. Why is financial inclusion important?
It is important because it is a necessary condition for sustaining equitable growth. There are few, if any, instances of an economy transiting from an agrarian system to a post-industrial modern society without broad-based financial inclusion. As people having comfortable access to financial services, we all know from personal experience that economic opportunity is strongly intertwined with financial access.