FINER.

About Project FINER

A public research preview mapping financial inclusion across India — district by district.

Project FINER (Financial Inclusion in the North East Region) started as an effort to make sense of the dense quarterly PDF booklets published by State Level Bankers' Committees (SLBCs) — the only source of district-level banking data in India.

What began with eight North Eastern states now publishes source-derived collections for 31 states and Union Territories. Coverage, schemas and comparability vary by source; the release manifest records exactly what each download contains.

India's financial inclusion data is scattered across dozens of agencies — RBI, NABARD, NPCI, UIDAI, individual state SLBCs — each publishing in different formats, at different granularities, on different schedules. Most of it is locked in PDFs.

Researchers, policymakers, and journalists who need district-level answers — which districts have the lowest credit-deposit ratios? where is KCC penetration weakest? how has Jan Dhan enrollment changed over time? — face weeks of manual data extraction before analysis can even begin.

Extract

We parse SLBC publications across inconsistent formats and retain the resulting source-derived files as raw/experimental material. Narrow products move to a standardized contract only when their identities, units and limitations are explicit.

Map

Selected district indicators are presented on an interactive map. The release also contains 2,75,631 capital-market registry records, which are currently location-level raw data rather than certified district measures.

Open

Files are publicly downloadable without registration. Public availability does not establish reuse permission, and each distribution carries an explicit quality tier, source ID and rights-review status.

31
State/UT source collections
69
Release distributions
4
Capital-market registries
1
Standardized preview
North East Region

Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura

Other state collections

Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal

Union Territory collections and Goa

NCT of Delhi, Goa, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh

Project FINER aggregates data from many sources. Several have specific citation requirements; we list them below in the form recommended by the original publishers. If you reuse any of these data, please cite the original sources rather than (or in addition to) Project FINER.

Government & Banking

SLBC quarterly data
State Level Bankers' Committee (SLBC) quarterly meeting agendas, published by lead-bank convenors per state.
Collections: 31 state/UT entries · Aggregation: source-reported district · Rights: not legally reviewed
RBI Banking Outlet Locator
Reserve Bank of India, Database on Indian Economy (DBIE) — Banking Outlet Locator. Comprehensive registry of branches, ATMs, BCs, CSPs, and Digital Banking Units.
Coverage: National · Source: dbie.rbi.org.in
UIDAI district enrolment data
Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) — district-level Aadhaar enrolment counts by date, age group, and pincode for April–December 2025.
Coverage: 985 districts · Source: uidai.gov.in
DAY-NRLM (SHGs)
Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana — National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. District-level SHG data.
Coverage: National · Source: nrlm.gov.in
CDSL · NSDL · AMFI
Combined district-level counts from CDSL Depository Participant service centres, NSDL DP service centres, and AMFI Mutual Fund Distributor registries.
Coverage: National · Sources: cdslindia.com · nsdl.co.in · amfiindia.com
PhonePe Pulse
PhonePe Pulse — open data on digital payment transactions through the PhonePe UPI platform.
Coverage: National · Source: phonepe.com/pulse

Health Statistics

NFHS-5 · Health Insurance Coverage
International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and ICF. 2021. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), 2019–21: India. Mumbai: IIPS.
Coverage: 637 districts surveyed · Producer: IIPS, ICF, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, GoI · Source: rchiips.org/nfhs

SHRUG-derived (Development Data Lab)

The following datasets are sourced from the Socioeconomic High-resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Platform (SHRUG) v2.1, maintained by Development Data Lab (DDL). All SHRUG datasets are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Per DDL: "Neither DDL nor the contributors of data to DDL shall be held liable for any improper or incorrect use or application of the data provided."

Meta Relative Wealth Index 2021
Chi, Guanghua, Han Fang, Sourav Chatterjee, and Joshua E. Blumenstock. "Microestimates of wealth for all low- and middle-income countries." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 3 (2022): e2113658119.
Asher, Sam, Tobias Lunt, Ryu Matsuura, and Paul Novosad. "Development research at high geographic resolution: an analysis of night-lights, firms, and poverty in India using the SHRUG open data platform." The World Bank Economic Review 35, no. 4 (2021): 845–871.
Producer: Meta Data for Good · License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Source: data.humdata.org/dataset/relative-wealth-index
VIIRS Annual Nightlights (2012–2023)
Asher, Sam, Tobias Lunt, Ryu Matsuura, and Paul Novosad. "Development research at high geographic resolution: an analysis of night-lights, firms, and poverty in India using the SHRUG open data platform." The World Bank Economic Review 35, no. 4 (2021): 845–871.
Producer: Colorado School of Mines, Earth Observatory Group (NOAA/CSM) · License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Source: eogdata.mines.edu/products/vnl
PMGSY Rural Roads (cumulative through 2015)
Asher, Sam, and Paul Novosad. "Rural Roads and Local Economic Development." American Economic Review 110, no. 3 (2020): 797–823.
Producer: National Rural Roads Development Authority (NRRDA), Ministry of Rural Development · License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Source: omms.nic.in

Project FINER's code and data-processing history are publicly inspectable on GitHub. No code licence or blanket data licence is currently granted; consult the rights matrix, methodology and repository licence notice before reuse.

View on GitHub

Have questions, corrections, or want to collaborate? Email us at mail@projectfiner.com or open an issue on GitHub.