Stepping aside and looking back

The year 2024 marks the tenth year of the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), the national mission for financial inclusion to ensure access to financial services, namely, a basic savings & deposit account, remittance, credit, insurance, and pension in an affordable manner.

- HARSH KUMAR

As one of the largest financial inclusion drives in the world and completed in record time, PMJDY is an indicator of the pulse of the bottom of the pyramid as it brings the poor within the fold of the formal financial system.

PMJDY has brought the unbanked into the banking system, expanded the financial architecture of India, and brought financial inclusion to almost every adult with 55.6 per cent women account holders.

PMJDY is testimony to how digital technology can be put to use for the poor so that they also benefit from the economic growth. Jan Dhan Darshak App, which is now an integral part of PMJDY, is a mobile application that provides a citizen-centric platform for locating banking touch points such as bank branches, ATMs, banking correspondents (BCS), Indian Post Payment Banks (IPPB), etc in the country.

Over 1.3 million banking touch points have been mapped on the JDD App, a number that is still growing. A total of 601,000 villages are mapped on the JDD app as of July 2023. Out of these, 599,468 (99.7 per cent) of total mapped villages are covered with banking outlets (bank branch, banking corner, or IPPB within 5 km radius).