<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<records xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://doaj.org/static/doaj/doajArticles.xsd" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <record>
    <language>eng</language>
    <publisher>ERSA</publisher>
    <journalTitle>REGION</journalTitle>
    <eissn>2409-5370</eissn>
    <publicationDate>2026-06-30</publicationDate>
    <volume>13</volume>
    <issue>1</issue>
    <startPage>153</startPage>
    <endPage>170</endPage>
    <doi>10.18335/region.v13i1.658</doi>
    <publisherRecordId>789</publisherRecordId>
    <title language="eng">Bank Access and Cultural Entropy  across the Regions of India</title>
    <authors>
      <author>
        <name>Govindapuram Suresh</name>
        <email>govindapuram.suresh@krea.edu.in</email>
        <affiliationId>0</affiliationId>
      </author>
    </authors>
    <affiliationsList>
      <affiliationName affiliationId="0"></affiliationName>
    </affiliationsList>
<abstract language="eng"><p>Holding a bank account represents access to an 
          important bank service for achieving the formal 
          financial inclusion of an individual. Unfortunately, 
          at present, people living in different regions of 
          India seem to experience a different level of access 
          to this basic bank service and are therefore experiencing 
          different levels of financial market exclusion. 
          This paper studies to what extent social and cultural 
          barriers hinder this effective banking access across 
          the regions of India. Normative caste-based exclusion 
          can be modified by the rigidity of the local context 
          in following inherited norms. This overall cultural 
          rigidity of the context can be termed cultural openness. 
          The Culture Based Development (CBD) approach to 
          quantify cultural openness through the Cultural 
          Entropy measure is employed here. Using data from 
          the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and National 
          Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), I conduct a probit 
          model estimation to test how Cultural Entropy (CE) 
          modifies the caste discrimination effect in access 
          to bank services. I find that the there is strong evidence 
          that regional Cultural Entropy modifies significantly 
          the individual caste discrimination experience 
          across the regions of the country.</p> </abstract>
<fullTextUrl format="html">https://openjournals.wu.ac.at/ojs/index.php/region/article/view/658/version/789</fullTextUrl>
<keywords>
    </keywords>
  </record>
</records>
