PMJDY: Nine Years Of Financial Inclusion In India

For educating a child, starting a business or treating a family member for a lethal disease everything requires accumulated capital. At the same time, India has evolved as a country from where people were using local elements either to accumulate their savings or take credit for their needs, which often turned into the source of their exploitation. 

On 15th August 2014, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi announced Pradhanmantri Jan Dhan Yojana to assemble the common man to the financial ambit, where his/her finances be taken care of by the government. 

Under this scheme, an unbanked person can open a bank account with zero balance and even further there is no requirement to maintain any minimum balance in PMJDY accounts.

While underlining the core of the scheme, PM Modi said, “ The farmers are committing suicide as they lend money from sahukars and not being able to return the money on high interest. Through this Jan Dhan Yojana, we are aiming to connect the poorest of poor with bank accounts.” 

From 28 August 2014, till today when the PMJDY is completing nine years, it has achieved several milestones, Here are some of them: 

Increase In Number Of Bank Account

As the scheme has completed nine years, the major accomplishment PMJDY has achieved is an increased number of bank accounts. According to the official data, PMJDY Accounts have grown three-fold from 14.72 crore in March 2015 to 50.09 crore as of 16 August 2023. The data also suggest that 66.7 per cent of PMJD accounts are women. 

This immense increase in the number of bank accounts signifies the financial inclusion of a large population into the banking ecosystem, which assisted them financially. Apart from this, the deposit under PMJDY also increased over the nine years. As per the numbers, on 15 March 2023, the deposit stood at Rs 15, 670 crore which has been increased to Rs 2,03, 505 crore which implies the larger usage of the banking system by countrymen. 

Benefits Of Other Fiscal Policies 

The account holder under PMJDY is not linked with the banking system but also benefits from several other fiscal policies implemented by the government. In order to empower the account holders, the government provisioned to pay deposits on their PMJDY accounts and also provided a RuPay Debit Card to PMJDY account holders. In addition to that, accident Insurance coverage of Rs.1 lakh is also given to the account holders which has increased to Rs 2 lakh for new accounts. 

Apart from this, PMJDY account holders are eligible for other fiscal policies like Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY), Atal Pension Yojana (APY), Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Bank (MUDRA) scheme.

Though the scheme started with a vision to cover countrymen with bank accounts but has provided many financial facilities to the people across the country. On completion of nine years of PMJDY, counting on the changes the scheme has brought in, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her message, said, “The 9 years of PMJDY-led interventions and digital transformation have revolutionised financial inclusion in India.  It is heartening to note that more than 50 crore people have been brought into the formal banking system through the opening of Jan Dhan Accounts.”