Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana
Source: PIB
GS II: Policies and Developmental Studies; GS III: Indian Economy

What is discussed under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana?

1. What Is Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana?
2. What are the Six Pillars of the Scheme?
3. Achievements through Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana?

Why in News?

• Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, a national mission for financial inclusion, has completed its eighth year.
• More than 46.25 crore beneficiaries banked under PMJDY since inception, amounting to Rs. 1,73,954 crore.

What Is Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana?

• The goal of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana is to provide affordable access to financial services including banking, savings, and deposit accounts, remittance, credit, insurance, and pension.

  

• The program was announced by Prime Minister Modi in his first Independence Day address in 2014.

• Ensure access to financial products and services at an affordable cost.
  Use of technology to lower cost & widen reach.

Basic tenets of the scheme

• Banking the unbanked: Opening of basic savings bank deposit (BSBD) account with minimal paperwork, relaxed KYC, e-KYC, account opening in camp mode, zero balance & zero charges.
• Securing the unsecured: Issuance of Indigenous Debit cards for cash withdrawals & payments at merchant locations, with free accident insurance coverage of Rs. 2 lakh.
• Funding the unfunded: Other financial products like micro-insurance, overdraft for consumption, micro-pension & micro-credit

What Are the Six Pillars of the Scheme?

1. Universal access to banking services: Branch and BC
2. Basic savings bank accounts with an overdraft facility of Rs. 10,000/- to every eligible adult
3. Financial Literacy Programme: Promoting savings, use of ATMs, getting ready for credit, availing insurance and pensions, using basic mobile phones for banking
4. Creation of Credit Guarantee Fund: To provide banks with some guarantee against defaults
5. Insurance: Accident cover up to Rs. 1,00,000 and life cover of Rs. 30,000 on the account opened between 15 Aug 2014 to 31 January 2015
6. Pension scheme for the Unorganized sector

Achievements through Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana?

PMJDY Accounts

• PMJDY Accounts were 46.25 crores, up from 14.72 crores in March 2015.

Operative PMJDY Accounts

• Out of the 46.25 crores PMJDY accounts, 37.57 crores (81.2%) are active as of August 22.
• Zero balance accounts make up just 8.2% of PMJDY accounts.

Deposits under PMJDY accounts

• In comparison to August 2015, total deposit balances have increased by 7.60 times.

Average Deposit per PMJDY account

• The average deposit per account increased by over 2.9 times.
• Another indication of increasing account usage and the development of saving habits among account holders is a rise in the average deposit.

Rupay Card issued to PMJDY account holders

• 31.94 crore RuPay cards total were issued to PMJDY account holders.
• Over time, both the number of RuPay cards and their use has risen.

Jan Dhan Darshak App

• In order to give citizens a platform for finding financial contact points including bank branches, ATMs, Bank Mitras, Post Offices, etc. around the nation, a mobile application was established.
• On the GIS App, more than 8 lakh financial touchpoints have been mapped.
• A mobile app is being used by concerned SLBCs to identify villages which are not served by banking touchpoints within 5 km.
• These identified villages are then allocated to various banks for the opening of banking outlets.
• The efforts have resulted in a significant decrease in the number of such villages.

Towards ensuring smooth DBT transactions

• About 5.4 crore PMJDY accountholders receive direct benefit transfer (DBT) from the Government under various schemes.
• DBT Mission, NPCI, banks and various other Ministries take part in identifying avoidable reasons for DBT failures.
• The number of failures has decreased from 13.5% (FY 19-20) to 9.7%.

Digital transactions

• The total number of digital transactions has gone up from 978 crores in FY 2016-17 to 7,195 crore in 2021-22.
• PMJDY RuPay has issued over 31.94 crore RuPay debit cards and installed 61.69 lakh PoS/mPoS machines as on June 22.

The Road Ahead

• Make an effort to guarantee that PMJDY account holders are covered by microinsurance programmes.
• Creation of acceptance infrastructure across India for the purpose of encouraging the use of digital payments, particularly the use of RuPay debit cards, among PMJDY account holders.
• Facilitating account holders’ access to microcredit and micro-investments such as flexi-recurring deposits, etc.

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