SAS 1300
The thematic standard for promoting financial inclusion, illustrated by CP LLP's E-Diksha project, which delivered financial and digital literacy to over 2.5 lakh people across three states.
In plain language
SAS 1300 covers projects that promote financial inclusion.
The workbook's case study for SAS 1300 follows CP LLP, a For Profit Enterprise. Its project, E-Diksha, delivered financial and digital literacy training. It reached poor and marginalised people across Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Haryana.
Financial exclusion has many causes: social barriers, poverty and low education among them. E-Diksha treated financial and digital literacy as the fix.
The training covered practical skills. It taught people to open and use a bank account, and to use ATM cards. It covered loans, savings and insurance too. It taught net-banking, mobile banking, and digital payment apps like BHIM, UPI and PayTM. The workbook notes the project "got a boost post demonetisation and Covid-19," as cash transactions shifted to digital more broadly at the same time.
How it works
The project's own scale, as the workbook states it:
- Over 2.5 lakh people reached across the 3 states
- Total investment: Rs 3.45 crore
- Data collection sample: 8% of direct beneficiaries, drawn from all three states, using interview schedules and questionnaires designed by a market research company
- Additional stakeholders consulted online (via Google Forms): resource persons, partner NGOs and financial institutions, and banks/NBFCs
The workbook's desk review for this case drew on annual reports, a baseline study report from before the project, participant feedback, government-scheme data (such as Jan Dhan Yojana), RBI data on financial inclusion, and National Digital Literacy Mission data.
Named limitations, per the workbook: participants struggled to communicate what they had learned effectively, accurate data on informal financial sources was limited, and it was hard to separate E-Diksha's own impact from other Government and non-Government financial-inclusion efforts running in parallel.
A worked example
Figures are the workbook's own SAS 1300 case study numbers.
CP LLP spends Rs 3.45 crore to reach over 2.5 lakh people across three states — a cost of roughly Rs 138 per person reached (3,45,00,000 ÷ 2,50,000), taking the 2.5 lakh figure as a floor.
An assessor applying SAS 1300 would look past this cost-per-person output figure to the 8% sampled beneficiaries' actual behaviour: whether they have genuinely shifted from cash to digital payments, and whether that shift can be told apart from the wider, nationwide post-demonetisation and post-Covid-19 shift the workbook itself flags as a confounding factor.
Why NISM asks about it
Chapter 8 (Social Impact Assessment - Case Studies), section 8.4, builds its case study around SAS 1300 and CP LLP's E-Diksha project, with its scale, desk review sources and named limitations. Social Impact Assessment Standards (Chapter 5, Table 5.5) lists SAS 1300 as covering the promotion of financial inclusion. Expect a question matching "E-Diksha" or "over 2.5 lakh, three states" to SAS 1300.
Common exam traps
- SAS 1300 covers financial inclusion specifically — not digital literacy generally, which sits under SAS 1500 as a separate, related theme.
- 8% is the E-Diksha sample size, not the same as the IWMP case's 5% sample — do not mix up sample percentages across different SAS case studies.
- The workbook names demonetisation and Covid-19 as external factors that boosted the project's relevance, and made its impact harder to isolate.
- For the full sixteen-standard list, see Social Impact Assessment Standards — this page focuses specifically on SAS 1300's own case study.
Check yourself
1.The workbook's case study on ABC Foundation's eye-care and cataract surgery project is presented under which draft Social Impact Assessment Standard?
- a)SAS 200 — promoting health care including mental healthcare, sanitation and safe drinking water
- b)SAS 400 — promoting gender equality and empowerment of women and LGBTQIA+ communities
- c)SAS 500 — environmental sustainability and climate change
- d)SAS 1300 — promotion of financial inclusion
Show the answer
Answer: (a) SAS 200 — promoting health care including mental healthcare, sanitation and safe drinking water
Case 8.2 on eye care is tied to SAS 200, the health care standard.
SAS 400 is used for NGO Sakhi's women's healthcare programme — tempting because it is also a health project, but the standard is about gender equality. SAS 500 is the watershed case, and SAS 1300 is E-Diksha.
2.Which statement about the E-Diksha case is correct?
- a)It was run by a not-for-profit trust in Maharashtra
- b)It was run by CP LLP, a for-profit enterprise, in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Haryana
- c)It focused on cataract surgeries
- d)It was aligned to SAS 1100
Show the answer
Answer: (b) It was run by CP LLP, a for-profit enterprise, in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Haryana
CP LLP, a for-profit enterprise, ran E-Diksha for financial and digital literacy in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Haryana, under SAS 1300 (financial inclusion).
Option A mixes in the watershed case. Option C is the eye-care case. Option D is the Niwas housing standard. It matters that a for-profit appears here — social impact assessment is not only for NGOs.
Where this is taught
Free preparation for NISM Series XXIIIRelated terms
- Desk reviewThe first step of a social impact assessor's fieldwork: examining an organisation's existing documents — reports, policies, photographs, prior data — before any physical inspection or interview.
- Quantitative approachOne of three approaches to Social Impact Assessment, using surveys and statistical analysis to process large volumes of data into results stakeholders can quantify and compare.
- Social Impact Assessment StandardsICAI's sixteen thematic standards, SAS 100 to SAS 1600, mirroring the SSE's eligible activities; compliance is mandatory for social impact assessments of social enterprises listed on an SSE.