PMJDY – Making numbers work and engaging masses
PM Narender Modi’s PMJDY scheme reached out to the Guinness book of records which is fantastic. The government’s motive of bringing financial inclusion is a fillip with PMJDY, with more than 125 million new bank accounts being opened from August 2014 to January 2015; a big enough number to make a pat on the back. But on analysing the numbers I am astonished to see that 72% of these accounts have zero balance. There is another stat which baffles me, which is that according to World Bank 43% of bank accounts in India are dormant, what can be the plausible reasons for such high dormancy. How can we increase the activity of people in banking? Merely opening a zero balance account won’t help in solving the problem of financial inclusion. People should also use the facility. A recent article in The Hindu by Ms. Jayshree Venkatesan dated 17 th August 2015, describes how a poor maid was denied banking facilities even under PMJDY. This is not a lone case but lot of poor are ...