When PM Modi announced his ambitious Jan Dhan Yojana in 2014, there were smirks and sly smiles on the faces of his detractors. They cited every reason they could find or invent or discover to say why the scheme won’t work. Today it has ensured 400 million of the “unbanked” from the poorest of the poor, have a bank account and get the Government subsidies directly into their accounts.
PMJDY infographics
Hate him or love him, you cannot dismiss these numbers !
A personal experience of the PMJDY scheme. Molina had been working as my domestic help since 2002. Every year there would be atleast two episodes of her getting beaten up by her husband. He would take the cash she had, to fund his drinking. Every time she had to shift into a new tenement, she would ask me money to pay for the rent deposit.
Since 2015, Molina stopped asking me for money to pay her rent deposit. She started working in a school and her salary came into her Jan Dhan account. The cooking Gas cylinder subsidy (Pahal Scheme) that she was eligible for also gets credited to her account without fail. Her husband could no longer snatch cash from her at will ! The last time I saw her bank pass book, she had a decent amount of money saved.
Am sure her wayward son forced her to give him some money or her husband figured out a way to take some money out of her account, but the fact that she had money saved is a huge positive change. This has been possible because of the Jan Dhan Yojana.
So many middlemen have gotten fat by skimming the government subsidies till 2014. The amount is staggering. I would like to speculate that the CONgress party had a nice gig going where the Government subsidies went out and came back to the FAMILY through the vast network of middlemen. No wonder the “Lootyens” gang hates Mr. Modi.
Indeed it has been a game changer for the poor and the “Lootyens” 🙂 for totally different reasons.
The Jan Dhan Yojana is the World’s Largest Financial Inclusion Scheme! Something to be proud of as many poor countries are thinking of implementing something similar.