Union Minister for Rural Development Shivraj Singh Chouhan will chair a high-level meeting with banks and State Rural Livelihoods Missions (SRLMs) on Thursday in Mumbai, focused on expanding credit access for Self Help Groups (SHGs) and women-led individual enterprises. The deliberations, according to an official statement, will shape the action plan for the government's Financial Inclusion 2.0 vision — aimed at ensuring timely and adequate financing for rural women entrepreneurs across India.

What the Meeting Will Cover

The agenda includes a wide range of credit-related priorities: doubling the individual enterprise credit portfolio, raising the average loan quantum disbursed to SHGs, cutting turnaround time in loan sanction and disbursement, and saturating credit linkage for SHGs in underserved and difficult regions. Strengthening the cooperative credit structure at the District Central Cooperative Bank (DCCB) and Primary Agricultural Credit Society (PACS) level is also on the table.

Ahead of the formal meeting, Chouhan will hold an extended interaction with SHG Didis — several of them Lakhpati Didis running established rural enterprises — to take stock of ground-level realities before engaging with institutional stakeholders.

Who Is Attending

The meeting will be attended by Union Ministers of State for Rural Development Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani and Kamlesh Paswan, as well as the Maharashtra Minister of Rural Development. Senior representatives from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Department of Financial Services, public sector banks, private sector banks, regional rural banks, cooperative banks, NABARD, PFRDA, and chief executive officers of State Rural Livelihoods Missions will also participate. Managing Directors, Executive Directors, and Chairmen of apex cooperative banks are expected to present their assessments of progress and the path ahead.

The Scale of DAY-NRLM So Far

The meeting comes against the backdrop of significant progress under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), one of the Centre's flagship rural programmes. Over the past one and a half decades, the Mission has mobilised more than 10 crore rural women into over 93 lakh SHGs and their federations. Cumulative credit disbursement to SHGs has crossed ₹13.67 lakh crore, backed by consistently high repayment discipline from members.

The credit flow has enabled a large number of SHG members to establish and expand livelihood enterprises, with 3.46 crore women emerging as Lakhpati Didis — women earning over ₹1 lakh annually from their enterprises. As many of these businesses enter a growth phase, the Mission's next strategic priority is nurturing women-led enterprises and supporting their transition into sustainable rural businesses.

Why Financial Inclusion 2.0 Matters

The Financial Inclusion 2.0 framework represents a shift in ambition — from linking SHGs to basic credit to enabling them to access higher-order financial services and scale their enterprises. This comes amid a broader recognition that first-generation credit access, while transformative, is insufficient for the next stage of rural enterprise growth. Notably, the focus on dedicated financing for women-led enterprises signals a policy pivot from group-level lending to individual entrepreneurship support — a more complex but potentially more impactful intervention.

The outcomes of Thursday's discussions are expected to feed directly into revised operational guidelines for banks and SRLMs, setting the direction for rural credit policy in the near term.