7 years of PM Jan Dhan Yojana

Source: This post is based on the article “7 years of PM Jan Dhan Yojana” published in the PIB on 28th August 2021.

Relevance: To Understand PMJDY

Recently, PM Jan Dhan Yojana (PM-JDY) has completed its 7 successful years of implementation.

What is PMJDY?

It is National Mission for Financial Inclusion to ensure access to financial services, namely, Banking/ Savings & Deposit Accounts, Remittance, Credit, Insurance, Pension in an affordable manner.

Impact of PMJDY:

• PMJDY has opened the gates of financial inclusion for poor and marginalized households. It brings the benefits of credit, insurance, remittances and government services through DBT.
• It has aided many government schemes as schemes like PM-KISAN, MGNREGA etc. are dependent on active bank accounts.
• Not only that, but it has also been of great help during the lockdown as within 10 days of lockdown, 20 Crore women PMJDY accounts received the money in the form of government assistance.

Achievements of the scheme

1. Accounts: More and more people are coming under financial inclusion through JDY.
   • More than 43.04 crore beneficiaries were linked to the banking system.
   • It has also helped in social empowerment as no. of women account holders in total JDY accounts is 55.47%.
   • In fact, 66.69% of Jan Dhan accounts are in rural and semi-urban areas.
2. Currency circulation through operative accounts: Out of the total 43.04 crore PMJDY accounts, 36.86 crores (85.6%) are operative, which helps in reviving credit and currency flow in the economy.
3. Deposits: Deposits have increased about 6.38 times. This is another indicator of increasing usage of accounts and inculcation of saving habits among the account holders.
4. Rupay Card: The number of RuPay cards and their usage has increased over time.
5. Jan Dhan Darshak App: It was launched to provide a citizen-centric platform for locating banking touchpoints such as bank branches, ATMs, Bank Mitras, Post Offices, etc. This app is also being used for identifying villages that are not served by banking touchpoints.
6. PM Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKP) for PMJDY women beneficiaries: Under this, an amount of ₹500 (for 3 months) was transferred to women PMJDY account holders during Covid lockdown.
7. Ensuring smooth DBT transactions: Close monitoring by the government with banks and NPCI (national payment Corporation of India) has reduced the DBT failures. The share of DBT failures due to avoidable reasons as a percentage of total DBT failures has decreased from 13.5% (FY 19-20) to 5.7% (FY 20-21).

What should be further done?

1. We should endeavour to ensure coverage of PMJDY account holders under micro-insurance schemes, such as PMJJBY (PM Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana) and PMSBY (PM Suraksha Bima Yojana).
2. We should work for the promotion of digital payments including RuPay debit card usage among PMJDY account holders through the creation of acceptance infrastructure across India.
3. Furthermore, we should work towards improving access of PMJDY account holders to Micro-credit and micro-investment such as Flexi-recurring deposit etc.

Terms to know

• National Payment Corporation of India