Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have been on the rise in the Indian financial sector, and policy and academic concerns are high, but rural banking institutions, especially Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and cooperative banks in Rajasthan, are not well represented in systematic research. The paper is a systematic review of peer reviewed literature, institutional reports as well as empirical literature published between 2020-2026 that discuss the effects of AI adoption on the operational efficiency of rural banking organizations in the state of Rajasthan. Based on the Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA 2020), 68 articles were chosen out of 2,050 records obtained in Scopus, Web of science, Google Scholar, EBSCO, ProQuest and institutional repositories. Thematic analysis demonstrates that AI applications, which include machine learning-based credit scoring, robotic process automation (RPA), natural language processing (NLP) in regional languages, AI-enabled fraud detection, predictive analytics to mobilise deposits, and voice interfaces, have collectively increased operational efficiency measures in the rural banks of Rajasthan between 28 and 74 percent of various operational areas. At the same time, the review traces the presence of chronic obstacles such as the lack of digital infrastructure, resistance within the workforce, the ambiguity in regulations, and digital disparity among rural communities as limiting factors to the AI-driven change. The paper also provides a thematic map of the types of AI interventions to the dimensions of operational efficiency and provides policy suggestions to speed up the responsible adoption of AI in the rural banking sector in Rajasthan.
https://doi.org/10.62823/JCECS/12.02(II).9094
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