India Post to complete financial inclusion target via DARPAN

New Delhi: In an attempt to provide banking services to the un-banked rural population as per their own 'convenience', the government on Thursday launched digital advancement project, which is aimed at achieving 100 per cent 'financial inclusion' target by 2018.

The project that has been christened as DARPAN (digital advancement project of the rural post office for a new India) was launched with the objective to improve quality of service in rural areas. As per the plan, every rural post office would be provided with handheld devices with Internet services to make account opening process a hassle-free.

While launching the project, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said, "The goal of the IT modernization project is to provide a low power technology solution to each branch postmaster (BPM) which would enable each of about 1.29 lakhs branch post offices (BOs) to improve the level of services being offered to rural customers across all the country."

Adding further, Sinha said that 43,171 branch post offices have already migrated under the DARPAN project, while the remaining branches would also adopt the scheme soon. The project has been started with a total outlay of Rs 1,400 crore.

"We have distributed 65,000 handheld devices to branch post offices and out of the total supplied devices, 40,000 are in operation, while the reaming 25,000 devices would soon become functional," said AN Nanda, the Postal Secretary.

The DARPAN project is aimed at expanding the reach of postal services through more customer interaction channels, providing better customer services, growth through new lines of business, etc.

"The project would increase the rural reach of the Department of Posts and enable branch offices to increase traffic of all financial remittances, savings accounts, rural Postal Life Insurance, and cash certificates, etc," the Nanda said, adding that the department is close to completing its financial inclusion target by March 2018.

To bolster its banking services, the India Post has established 991 ATMs across the country, which is interoperable with other banks.

The postal ATMs are proving a great help to the rural populace as till now over 1.12 crore transactions have been carried out on the postal ATMs out of which over 70.24 lakh transactions have been done by the customers of other banks, a senior official said.