Hinglish

Banking for All and Other Institutions

Class 7 Social Science · Chapter 20: Banks and the Magic of Finance · NCERT Exploring Society: India and Beyond section 20.3

Learn

Before 2014, only about 15 crore Indians had bank accounts. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (2014) let everyone open an account with no minimum balance or fees, and over 50 crore accounts have since opened, mostly by women. Farmers borrow to grow their work, wages and scholarships go directly into accounts, and fewer middlemen stand in between. Post offices offer savings schemes like National Savings Certificates, Kisan Vikas Patra and Sukanya Samriddhi, reaching remote villages. NABARD funds rural development, farming and village industries, and other institutions fund industry.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), set up in 1935 and India's central bank since 1949, supervises all banks. It is the banker to banks, keeping their accounts and lending to them and the government; it prints and issues currency and fixes the benchmark interest rate. Statues of a yakṣha and yakṣhiṇī, guardians of Kubera's treasure, stand at its Delhi office. Banking is old in India too: temples lent money to artisans, merchants and local governments, with contracts on copper plates, as a 13th-century inscription at Kodumbalur in Tamil Nadu records.

Explore: who does what?

  1. Sort each role.

Remember

  • Jan Dhan Yojana brought crores of people, mostly women, into banking; post offices and NABARD widen access.
  • The RBI is India's central bank: it regulates banks, issues currency and sets interest rates.

Quick check

Why is the RBI called the "banker to banks"?

  1. it keeps banks' accounts, lends to them and regulates them
  2. it opens accounts for every citizen
  3. it runs the stock market
  4. it is the oldest temple bank
Answer

it keeps banks' accounts, lends to them and regulates them. It also issues India's currency.

Think about it

Should everyone be required to have a bank account? Why or why not?

One answer

Accounts keep money safe and let benefits arrive directly, so everyone should have easy access; but forcing it could burden people far from banks or without phones, so access matters more than compulsion.

Practice

Practise with fresh questions at three levels (easy, medium, hard), some answered hands-on, with hints and worked answers. Get 4 of your last 5 right to finish the topic.