India Has Banked Millions. Now to Empower Them

The missing piece in India's financial inclusion story is financial literacy

- ANIL PADMANABHAN

Eleven years ago, 561.6 million people did not have a bank account. Today, they do, thanks to the Jan Dhan scheme launched on 15 August 2014. Indeed, this achievement of bringing a cohort that is nearly one-and-a-half times the population of the US into the financial mainstream is staggering.

Tagged to Aadhaar, the 12-digit unique identity, these bank accounts have provided the newly banked an economic identity, dignity, and agency. In the last decade, financial inclusion has reshaped how government subsidies are delivered, changed the way households manage money, and inspired greater participation of women in the economy.

But, access is only the beginning. The real challenge is ensuring that these accounts become instruments of financial empowerment—transforming savers into investors, households into wealth-builders, and communities into economic engines. This will demand a more audacious ambition in the next decade.

Financial inclusion 2.0 will be about enabling financial literacy, and thereby spurring investments in financial instruments to create resilience in newly banked households to withstand the growing frequency of abrupt economic shocks. In short, the challenge is to convert access into prosperity.