Abstract : The paper studies the impact of financial literacy on investment decisions and rural India development. Digital financial literacy has become the current need for India. Despite of various initiative by the government on digitalization, individuals lack in knowledge of available digital financial product primarily in rural area. Lack of knowledge and awareness of financial matters to individuals with lower education level is one of the biggest challenges in front of different stakeholders of financial institutions, such as policy makers, financial institutions, bankers, and government. The primary data was collected through a questionnaire with sample size of 220 respondents. It studies that gender is directly propionate to investment decisions in rural India. Age has an impact on financial literacy level of individuals. The paper concludes that individuals from rural area lacks in and should focus on gaining digital financial literacy and discovers some potential sources. As per the study there are various factors that affect digital financial literacy, such as individual interest, occupation, opportunities, income, marital status, access to digital platforms, internet access, peer groups. People from urban areas are more digitally literate as compared to people from rural areas. Government needs to take multiple initiatives to aware individuals about avenues to invest digitally. Some of the major investment avenues are sovereign gold bonds, stock market, mutual funds, ETF’s, government bonds, pension schemes, post office deposits. For a developing country like India, it is necessary to focus on the investment behavior of women as it is observed in maximum cases that women earn and give the money in hands of husband, son, or other dependent for investment. The major problem here is of lack of education to women about investments and their dependency on males.

Keywords: Behavioral Finance, Financial Literacy, Investment decision-making, Rural development, Digital finance.