Economic growth serves as most robust, sustainable path to financial inclusion: CEA

14 Jan 2026 Evaluate

Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) V Anantha Nageswaran has said that economic growth serves as the most robust and sustainable path to financial inclusion for India. He said ‘when an economy is generating jobs, incomes, markets and demand, people do not need to be forced into the financial system. They enter naturally...because they see opportunities, they invest, because the future looks larger than the present.’ He cautioned that no amount of financial institutions can substitute for what economic growth can provide, so finance is a compliment to growth, not its replacement.

CEA has stated that where livelihoods are stagnant, inclusion becomes fragile, and where livelihoods are expanding, inclusion becomes a self-reinforcing process. So, he said when finance is properly aligned with real economic activity, it can become a powerful catalyst for growth. 

Observing that inclusive finance succeeds when it strengthens real economic activity, not when it becomes an end in itself, he said that under the PM SVANidhi, street vendors, who were hit hardest during the pandemic, used access to working capital not just to survive, but to expand, invest in basic assets, improve margins and build more sustainable businesses. This is what inclusion should mean -- enabling people to grow out of fragility and move from survival trading to more productive operations. He also flagged that financial inclusion that leads to indiscriminate lending destroys its purpose, resulting in stress and over-indebtedness rather than empowerment.   


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