Financial inclusion in India: A retrospective analysis of pradhan mantri jan dhan yojana scheme

“Financial inclusion” is a wide term which means the target to include different categories of low-level income groups or distinguishable weaker economic section into the scope of financial and banking sector. In order to achieve progressive growth of the economy, it is necessary to include those people who are outside the ambit of the banking sector. World Bank has been very active in encouraging the Governments of different countries, especially the developing nations to take initiatives in this field. Financial inclusion not only means to include people by opening up accounts but also to provide them with different forms of credits and payment facilities. Performance of India in the recent past in this area has been very poor as evident from reports of the World Bank. As a part of India's mission for financial inclusion, Government came up with a project “Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana” (PMJDY) in August 2014. There are other schemes which have been running with the same motive even before 2014, but PMJDY has covered a wider scope than others.

The major objective of PMJDY was to bring an end to the last mile leakage and corruption and thereby ensuring that the subsidies reach to their correct destination at proper time directly through the bank. This paper is both descriptive and analytical in nature which seeks to find out different issues of this scheme and analyze its success by comparing and contrasting the present performance of India in terms of financial inclusion with its performance before introduction of this scheme.