NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Duplication of accounts, account dormancy and the financial unsustainability of the Bank Mitra model. While the Jan Dhan Yojana may be one of the most exhaustive financial inclusion processes to date, there’s still more to be done.

From San Jose to Wembley Stadium, there are very few people that haven’t heard of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s massive financial inclusion project, the Jan Dhan Yojana (JDY) initiative.

On August 15, 2014, Modi announced his mission to make banking facilities available to all households in India, which would go onto become a key fixture of his development ‘JAM’ policy. Less than six months later, over 11.5 crore bank accounts were opened (1.5 crore accounts after just a week), a feat that apparently made its way into the Guinness Book of World records.

A little over a year later – as of April 20, 2016 – the numbers appear to speak for themselves. Nearly ww crore (220 million) accounts have been opened so far, with the total deposits amounting to a little over 36,700 crore rupees. Last weekend, in a speech at Varanasi, Modi pointed out how JDY was helping the “poor battle poverty”. “Our experience during Jan Dhan Yojana brought out the richness of the poor,” he said.