Synopsis Despite the fact that India is the second fastest growing economy, it still has about 28 crore people, of whom many are rural folk below the poverty line—reason why rural credit has not been expanding. The government, banks and voluntary organizations need to work jointly to uplift the poor and the downtrodden in rural India. Recent initiatives of the RBI in this context include redefining priority sector credit, excluding housing finance and export credit from priority sector tag, and steps to reform regional rural banks and cooperative institutions.