PMJDY Revolution

Few Government interventions anywhere in the world can claim to have brought nearly 59 crore people into the formal banking net within a decade. The PradhanMantri Jan DhanYojana (PMJDY), launched in 2014 as the National Mission for Financial Inclusion, has done precisely that. A recent RTI reply reveals the scale of the exercise: 59,03,74,907 accounts, holding a combined balance of over Rs 3.15 lakh crore as of August 2026. By any measure, this is one of the largest financial inclusion programmes ever undertaken, and it deserves recognition as such. The numbers behind the numbers are equally striking. Women, including transgender account holders, account for 32.89 crore of these accounts, comfortably outnumbering the 26.14 crore held by men. This is no accident. Women have been the principal beneficiaries of direct benefit transfers under schemes ranging from maternity benefits to cooking gas subsidies. LadliBehna, BetiPadao and Jan Dhan accounts gave them, often for the first time, a formal financial identity independent of male relatives. That alone represents a quiet social revolution.

The scheme's true genius, however, lies in what it enabled next. Direct bank transfers for a host of welfare schemes became possible only because ordinary citizens, many of them daily-wage earners with no prior banking history, suddenly had accounts into which the state could deposit money without leakage. The subsequent rollout of UPI compounded this benefit, allowing labourers to receive wages instantly and small traders to accept payments without handling cash. Together, Jan Dhan and UPI have quietly rewired how India's poorest transact.

Yet the RTI data also exposes uncomfortable truths that cannot be brushed aside. Every fourth account is inoperative, while another 5.72 crore hold zero balance. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, between them, account for a disproportionate share of both categories, suggesting that financial inclusion on paper has not always translated into sustained financial engagement on the ground for many. Whether this reflects continuing poverty, migration, duplicate accounts opened to meet targets, or simple neglect once the initial enthusiasm faded, it is a question the Government would do well to investigate rather than dismiss. None of this, though, should overshadow the larger achievement. Building the plumbing of financial inclusion for a population larger than most continents, and doing so within a single decade, is no small feat. The credit for conceiving and driving through this vision belongs to the present Government and the Prime Minister personally.