Impact of Pradhan mantri jan dhan yojana on rural poor a tool for effective financial inclusion

Abstract

Access to banking services without any discrimination to a large population is the primary objective of the public policy while extending the scope of activities of the financial system to the vulnerable group of people is the objective of financial inclusion. Hence, to meet these objectives the Government of India and the RBI have been playing a larger role to bring the financially excluded group into the banking system. Among several initiatives taken both by the Government of India and the RBI Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana is the gigantic step taken to provide basic savings bank account, access need-based credit, remittance facilities, insurance and pension to all the individuals of the country. As of January 15th, 2020 out of 37.87 crore accounts opened under the PMJDY scheme, 30.78 crore accounts (81.3 percent) are in operation, but no relevant information has been revealed to the seven crore inactive accounts. The current statistics depict that the scheme is undoubtedly working towards achieving the scheme objective by bringing all the households of India under the banking stream. Hence, the current study is intended to cover the impact of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana scheme on rural poor in Bangalore rural district and study the highlights and importance of the PMJDY scheme. newlineThe socio-economic status of the PMJDY account holders was identified through a demographic profile. The awareness, usage and impact of the PMJDY scheme were examined based on the demography of the respondents. And lastly, the study analysed the effect of awareness and usage of scheme benefits and their impact on the well-being of PMJDY account holders. newlineTo achieve the above said objectives, the primary data was gathered with help of a structured questionnaire using interviews schedules from 704 PMJDY account holders of the Bangalore rural district. Using Cronbach s alpha the reliability of the scale was measured and to analyse the collected data, descriptive statistics and inferential statistics like Independent sample t-test,