Uttar Pradesh, which carries the socio-economic stigma of being one of India’s Bimaru (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states, has something to rejoice: it leads in availing of banking services and possessing telephone/mobile assets.
According to the 2011 census, 72 per cent of the UP households had been availing of banking services vis-à-vis the national figure of 58.70 per cent. In the 2001 census, the corresponding percentages of UP and India were 44.1 per cent and 35.54 per cent respectively.
In absolute numbers, 23.71 million UP households had been availing of banking services, which included 18.74 million and 4.97 million rural and urban households.
Interestingly, UP hinterland led the country in adopting banking services by clocking 115 per cent decadal growth over urban areas, which posted only about 80 per cent growth.
The analysis illustrates that the financial inclusion scheme is doing well in UP, wherein commercial banks had been designated as lead bankers of villages and mandated to provide banking services to all villages having population of over 2,000 by March 31, 2012.
What is more, 67 per cent of UP households had telephone/mobile vis-à-vis all-India figure of 63 per cent. For households possessing mobile phones only, UP led India with 61 per cent and 59 per cent respectively.
Besides, 20 per cent of households in urban areas and five per cent in rural areas possessed computer/laptops. However, only three per cent of households had internet connection.
The country’s most populous state has roughly 200 million people living in its 1,06,773 villages and 913 in towns.
“The state government has asked for various sets of socio-economic data for planning purpose and we are working on it,” UP census operations director Neena Sharma told the media while releasing the final set of census data here.
The mammoth UP census enumerated 45 million households (34.6 million and 10.4 million in rural and urban areas) for data collection — up from 34 million during the 2001 census.
The total number of families in UP is over 32.92 million.
