By Sanjay Lohiya
Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was launched with a simple, yet challenging ambition — bring every Indian household into the formal banking system. Twelve years later, the scheme has become the largest financial inclusion programme anywhere in the world, where bank accounts are reshaping how millions of Indians save, borrow and receive government support through direct benefit transfers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled PMJDY on August 28, 2014, as one of his government’s earliest major initiatives. The task ahead was daunting given India’s scale and diversity — a country of roughly 1.5 billion people spread across the length and breadth of the country, often difficult & remote terrains — with the poor and the marginalised, who were least likely to have any formal banking access and financial awareness, as the major target group.
The numbers since then tell their own story. Before PMJDY, only 59% of Indian households and just 35% of adults had a bank account. Today, nearly every household is banked and almost 96% adults hold an account. Around 590 million accounts have been opened under PMJDY and approximately 78% of them are in rural and semi-urban areas.
One of the most significant shifts has been in who holds these accounts. Women now make up 56% of Jan Dhan account holders, evidence that the scheme has helped narrow a long-standing gender gap in financial access. The World Bank’s Findex report put overall account ownership among Indians aged 15 and above at 89% in 2024, up sharply from 53% in 2014, with the male-female gap now described as negligible. A separate National Sample Survey (the 79th round comprehensive annual modular survey, or CAMS, for 2022-23) placed adult account ownership even higher, at 94.65%. The Reserve Bank of India’s Financial Inclusion Index reflects the same upward trend, rising from 43.4 in March 2017 to 70 in March 2026. Deposits in these accounts have swelled too, now totalling Rs 3.1 lakh crore — a near twentyfold rise since 2015. That growth points to rising public trust in formal banking channels over other informal channels like moneylenders.
The scheme made headlines from its very early days. In its opening week in August 2014, banks opened more than 18 million accounts. This feat that earned PMJDY a Guinness World Record where 15 million of those accounts opened on day one alone. Savings accounts, including Jan Dhan accounts, have become the backbone of India’s direct benefit transfer system, allowing subsidies and relief payments to reach citizens directly, without intermediaries. That infrastructure proved its value during demonetisation and again during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it enabled the rapid disbursal of emergency government support.
Beyond savings, insurance and pension coverage is facilitated to millions through the Jan Suraksha Schemes. More than 411 million RuPay debit cards have been issued, each carrying built-in accident insurance worth `2 lakh. Life and accident cover of `2 lakh is available through Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, giving the citizens a layer of financial protection. PMJDY’s massive account base also underpinned the nationwide growth of UPI and digital payments.
The way forward lies in raising the utilisation of accounts and improving processes like re-KYC formalities. Banks have been responding to these challenges with camps aimed at updating customer records, facilitating re-KYC, improving financial literacy and enrolling more people in insurance and pension schemes. Using technology like video KYC, doorstep KYC for senior citizens and stronger utilisation of Bank Mitra channels are also undertaken to improve utilisation.
Thus, the next phase of Jan Dhan will have to expand affordable lending, widen pension and insurance coverage, deepen digital banking in rural areas, and strengthen financial literacy — the building blocks of our collective vision of a Viksit Bharat by 2047. Banks should use emerging tools such as voice-based transaction authorisation, offline payment mechanisms and AI-enabled fraud prevention to facilitate digital banking access to even those with minimal digital literacy, thereby extending banking services further into remote areas.
As the programme enters its thirteenth year, PMJDY which began as a drive to open bank accounts has evolved into an entire architecture of financial inclusion by linking savings, credit, insurance and pensions to people who were once entirely outside the formal financial system. PMJDY’s legacy is clear, it has redrawn the boundary of India’s financial economy by making every citizen a stakeholder in it. The road ahead is to ensure that this foundation continue to facilitate the advancement of the marginalised towards sustained economic emancipation.
(The writer is secretary, department of financial services, ministry of finance)
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.