Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana: Post implementation of FM’s policy (Survey Based)

Abstract

Financial Inclusion, in its most basic form, implies access to banking services for everyone. It enables improved and sustainable socio-economic development of the country, empowerment of underprivileged, poor and women. Its mission is to make them self-sufficient and well informed in order to take better financial decisions. It takes into account the participation of vulnerable groups such as weaker sections of society and low income groups depending on their ease of access to financial services such as savings, payment account, credit insurance, pensions etc. Also, the objective of financial inclusion programme is easy availability of financial services that allows maximum investments in business opportunities, education, retirement savings, insurance against risks, etc. Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) is a national mission on financial inclusion aimed at comprehensive financial inclusion of all households in the country. This plan envisages universal access to banking facilities (with at least one basic bank account for every household), financial literacy, credit, insurance and pension facility. In addition, the beneficiaries would get a RuPay Debit card having inbuilt accident insurance cover. It also envisages channelling different relevant Government benefits (from Centre/State/Local Bodies) to the beneficiaries’ accounts, thus, further pushing the Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme of the Union Government. Although there were steps taken for financial inclusion earlier to this program also, primary focus was always on villages having more than 2000 population. PMJDY, however, focuses on households to extend basic financial services. It provides more coverage in terms of facilities for an individual, in comparison with what was achieved through different initiatives taken in the past for financial inclusion. Although the current government has opened a large number of bank accounts (~17 crores as on 11th August, 2015), this hasn’t been without questions around the challenges in meeting the objectives of financial inclusion going forward. Through this project we intend to understand these ground level realities – challenges, gaps in implementation, actual benefits realized by the target population, etc. We worked with a NGO named Sampark, which is based out of Bangalore and has been working on financial inclusion of migrant construction labourers in Karnataka for the last three years. For this project, our study was limited to the migrant construction workers in Bellandur area of Bangalore, about 20km from IIMB campus.