Urban co-operative banks and their extent of access to Borrowers-A Study in Gulbarga District of Karnataka

Urban Co-operative Banks (UCBs) are an important part of the financial system in India. It is, therefore, necessary that the UCBs emerge as a sound and healthy network of jointly owned, democratically controlled, and ethically managed banking institutions providing need based quality banking services, essentially to the middle and lower middle classes and marginalized sections of the society. The present study is focused on examining the borrowers preference of Urban Cooperative Banks. The study is an attempt made to examine the extent of borrower purchase behavior influenced by Urban Cooperative Banks in Gulbarga District of Karnataka State and its impact on augmenting income, employment generation and improving the living standards of the sample borrowers. The observations in this study are basically based on the field survey (during 2012-13) conducted on 100 sample borrowers who actively visited the Sir M. Vishweshwaraiah Sahakara Bank Niyamita, Gulbarga taluk (50 borrowers) and Shri Mahatma Basaveshwara Cooperative Bank Ltd, Afzalpur taluk (50 borrowers). It has been found that UCBs are important crowd pullers and played an important role in improving the living style, social status, improving their business based on borrowers interest and their positive involvement at the Urban Cooperative Banks of the sample selected Gulbarga taluk and Afzalpur taluk in Gulbarga district of Karnataka. Most of the borrowers reported that UCBs are provided several types of loans facilities as per members convenience with low rate of Interest