Survey on Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY)

Name of the Scheme: Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY)

Who launched this? Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Date of launch: 28 August 2014.

Objective of this scheme:

·  PMJDY is a National Mission on Financial Inclusion encompassing an integrated approach to bring about comprehensive financial inclusion of all the households in the country.

·   The plan envisages universal access to banking facilities with at least one basic banking account for every household, financial literacy, access to credit, insurance and pension facility. In addition, the beneficiaries would get RuPay Debit card having inbuilt accident insurance cover of र 1 lakh.

Who conducted survey on Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY)?

 MicroSave - an international financial inclusion consulting firm

·   The report is based on three rounds of assessment and review of PMJDY, conducted by MicroSave between October 2014 and December 2015, surveying BMs and customers.

·    The objective of these assessments was to analyse and assess the impact of and challenges associated with PMJDY, for beneficiaries as also for BMs

·    In total, over the three rounds of survey, 5,366 BMs and 18,162 customers were interviewed across 17 states and one union territory.

·   The report captures aspects such as BM’s availability, transaction readiness, dormancy levels and transactional details.

·  It also focussed on Aadhaar seeding and RuPay card delivery/usage by PMJDY account holders.

MicroSave’s survey has exposed numerous operational difficulties of PMJDY

The survey has exposed numerous operational difficulties that need to be addressed. For instance,

1.   14 per cent of customers who came to the BMs were unable to open a PMJDY account, with reasons such as "incomplete account opening form" and rejection of documents by bank branches.

2.   There are significant challenges with delivery and activation of RuPay cards and BMs report problems of connectivity for making transactions.

3.  There is still low awareness regarding insurance and pension schemes and lack of clarity on overdraft eligibility.

4.  Commissions on government benefits are not sufficient and often not paid regularly. So, though monthly average incomes have increased to lie between Rs 4,000 to Rs 6,000, depending on the type of business, this is still much less than the BMs' expectation of Rs 13,000.

Sources :  Business Standard -  click here for article link