The easing of fiscal pressures on monetary policy has been a continuous process but two discrete events marked significant milestones. The first was the agreement between the Reserve Bank and the Government to completely phase out ad-hoc treasury bills from April 1997, a move that saw the termination of the egregious practice of automatic monetization by the central bank of the government’s fiscal deficit.
Thus, not only is the common individual deprived of access to banks for generating savings or availing credit, but so is the financial system of resources commensurate with the burgeoning growth of incomes all over the country. It is this very feature that the process of financial inclusion seeks to address. This is an aspect to which I turn next. IV.