Malari- an interior area in the Chomoli district of Uttarakhand may not have proper road connectivity or easy access to basic amenities likedrinking water, but the village is now financially included.

The 400 families in the village will now have access to banking facilities. It is amongst the first of the 258 villages which have not been touched by banking to be provided such services under the new scheme of the Uttarakhand state government.

The largest lender of the country, State Bank of India has used the business correspondent (BC) model and has opened 150 accounts in Malari as a part of the Atal Adarsh Gram Yojna.

"We are working very hard to provide banking facilities to all those villages which have been adopted under the Atal Adarsh Gram Yojna," said Sunil Pant, Chief General Manager (CJM) of SBI.

Following Malari, other villages would also be touched by banking services using the BC model by SBI and other leading banks like Punjab National Bank and Bank of Baroda.

Zero Mass Foundation , a Mumbai based company has been selected by SBI for acting as its BC.